Facebook has topped a list which reveals the most popular search terms typed by Google’s UK users over the last 12 months.

The social site finished ahead of the search giant’s own video-hosting site YouTube in the table, with Google itself coming in third.

E-retailers will be pleased to know that three major shopping sites made it into the top 10, with Argos, eBay and Amazon all making appearances.

Alongside retail, news sites were also popular. The Daily Mail and BBC News featured in eighth and sixth place respectively.

Google also looked at the questions being asked in its search bar, with the most popular queries being “what is Facebook?” and “what is love?”

Some of the other topics in the “What is…” search list were blood pressure, energy and cancer, while Universal Jobsmatch and minimum wage also popped up – perhaps reflecting the year’s economic worries.

Speaking about Facebook’s standing in the main query list, Davies Murphy Group analyst Chris Green said:

“Facebook has now firmly established itself as a hub on the internet, making it a destination for surfers to do multiple tasks such as communications, gaming, shopping, photo-sharing and information gathering.”

The list of terms was based on how often the associated words were typed into the search engine. Green went on to say that Google’s appearance in its own results may have something to do with the popularity of browsers like Chrome, in which the address bar also acts as a Google search box.

He added:

“Chrome makes no distinction between web addresses and words in its search box so people get lazy and just type in single words like Google rather than full web addresses, but this registers as a search.”

In terms of trending topics, the passing of Hollywood actor Paul Walker was high in the standings, along with the recent releases of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Apple’s iPhone 5S.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.