Figures from Nielsen Online show that internet users spent an average of 5 hours and 46 minutes on Facebook in August compared to just 1 hour and 53 minutes on Google.
Yahoo! ranked a distant second, only managing to persuade users to stick around for 3 hours and 14 minutes, despite a wealth of news, sports content and financial data.
YouTube also failed to dazzle during August, according to Nielsen, with internet users spending a disappointing 1 hour and 17 minutes watching video content on the site.
Google's strategy has always been to encourage consumers to leave its homepage as quickly as possible. However, the search engine's role as the starting point for the majority of internet journeys is increasingly under threat from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
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