YouTube to overtake Facebook in website visits

Though Google retains its top spot as the most-visited website in the U.S., a new study from SimilarWeb shows YouTube is on the rise—and Facebook’s visits have fallen by several billion.

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Facebook’s popularity is waning—at least in the United States.

The company has dropped from an average of 8.5 billion hits per month to about 4.7 billion. This drop in views could be part of Facebook’s struggles to keep user trust in the wake of data misuse scandals, or part of a larger trend as competition increases and users spend fewer hours in one place.

However, not every web company has seen a drop in usership. Google has fallen off, though it maintains its top spot, but YouTube is on the rise—and could surpass Facebook as the No. 2 website in the U.S.

These findings come from a new study from SimilarWeb, which analyzed the traffic received by the top web companies in the U.S.

The report has many questioning the hierarchy of internet companies and wondering what might be wrong at Facebook. Many PR pros have already shaken up their Facebook strategy as algorithm changes have limited their organic reach.

Should they now invest in another platform, specifically YouTube?

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