Facebook grounded again

Facebook’s rally fizzled.

The social network’s stock took a hit yesterday after a report this weekend revived talk that the company is overvalued.

Shares in the Menlo Park, Calif., company should be worth $15 if it were valued similar to tech rivals Google and Apple, the report said.

Facebook shares have been valued at about 36 times earnings, while Apple and Google’s stock are valued at 16 times earnings, said the report in Barron’s.

Facebook shares, which had rallied 30 percent from a low of $17.73 earlier this month, fell 9.1 percent yesterday to $20.79.

The rally started after CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his first post-IPO comments and talked up Facebook’s growth potential.

Goldman Sachs also helped lessen enthusiasm with a note cautioning against investing in the company while its stock remains volatile.

The banking giant said Facebook was still limited by the overhang from lock-up expirations that would free more employees and insiders to sell shares in the coming weeks and months.

Meanwhile, Google saw its shares rise to a new a high yesterday, up more than 2 percent to close at $749.38.

Ad tracker eMarketer issued a report that forecast record sales for Google. The research firm said Google’s display ad sales would jump almost 40 percent to $2.31 billion this year.

The search giant would overtake its social rival Facebook in the display-ad business, eMarketer predicted.

On top of that, Google is receiving high marks for its maps app after Apple removed it from its latest iPhone software but was criticized for installing an inferior in-house product.