Comments on: Survey: Twitter Less than 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines; Facebook 1%

By: Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:20:21 +0000

Good point Kevin. There is a degree of link cannibalization going on in which people who previously would have shared (and linked to) content on blogs and sites are now doing so on Twitter, thus reducing the number of links with SEO value that the content receives. But those links still drive traffic, and exposure through Twitter and other social media sites fosters a lot of secondary links generated in the way you described (which do have SEO value).

By: Kevin Sablan

Kevin Sablan — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:49:15 +0000

One more, nearly immeasurable, number to consider is the amount of traffic sent to news sites via blog posts and comments posted by people who first became aware of a news article via Twitter or Facebook.

By: Deanna Stork

Deanna Stork — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:41:32 +0000

Interesting facts and figures; most people probably haven’t thought of Facebook and Twitter in these terms before.
Nice post!

By: Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:45:27 +0000

That's a good point Frank, thanks. Danny Sullivan wrote about this in SEL a while back too: Is Twitter Sending You 500% To 1600% More Traffic Than You Might Think? Kemp, yes the surveyed groups would be considered traditional publications. I did a different survey last year that included some newer and Web only outlets as well. At that point (over a year ago) the sites were seeing anywhere from less than 1% to nearly 20% of site traffic coming from various forms of social media. Thanks for sharing your insights.

By: Kemp Edmonds

Kemp Edmonds — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:06:01 +0000

Assuming that “a mix of sites covering general and breaking news as well as specific topics such as lifestyle, sports or entertainment” means more traditional publications(10 US newspaper and magazine sites) then we are talking about large traditional media organizations. Their sites are secondary to their product newspapers and magazines. Most of their web traffic comes from more traditional web sources as well.

Large organizations with large natural traffic(regular users) generally have about 1% come from social media, if they are active on them. For big traffic social media stills needs more people! Last numbers I heard were about 20% of US internet users use social media daily. Anyone have any new or related numbers on that please contact me or post.

The real difference social media can make is for small and medium businesses, bloggers and consultants. There is a more natural fit. It would be cool to analyze your flow as an example.

Small and medium business can benefit from a blog in the same way but for organizations seeing 1Million+ monthlys, social media’s ~1% looks small but is large and in the top 10 referrers as you lay out in your final points.

The greatest insight I gleaned from what the numbers say – for most sites – is that people use search engines to find things even if they are searching for the actual website name to find the website, we’ve all seen it in analytics.

Frank’s point about the click through inaccuracy from Twitter apps should be noted. I find this to be frustrating when measuring the twitter effectiveness of shortened links used for ongoing campaigns.

By: Frank Prendergast

Frank Prendergast — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:10:58 +0000

Thanks for sharing these figures. I wonder though whether the true Twitter percentage might not be higher than it seems. Often people are only counting the traffic from Twitter.com, and many third party Twitter clients result in what looks like direct traffic as, it seems, they don't pass a referrer. Here's a post on the issue from Joost de Valk: http://yoast.com/twitter-analytics/

By: Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:39:15 +0000

Annie, that’s an excellent point, it is all in how you frame and interpet the data. I could have just as easily made the headline “Twitter Now Nearly 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines.” Also when all social media referrals are grouped together (though defining what is or isn’t “social media” can be a challenge), that collective figure is starting to be more competitive with things like search referrals or content partnerships.

Nathan, I ‘m wondering that about Digg too. As Digg went more mainstream over the past couple years lots of newspapers and general interest magazines have seen increases in traffic from it. But at least among the group I surveyed, things have dropped off so far this year. I’d like to get more data on that.

Thanks for your comments.

By: Nathan Joynt

Nathan Joynt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:04:37 +0000

I wonder if these numbers correspond to the growth rate of these social networks. Obviously FB and Twitter users continue to grow. Is Digg losing steam?

By: Annie Pettit

Annie Pettit — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:36:23 +0000

The fact that 1 single site on an internet of millions or BILLIONS of sites is responsible for 1 out of 100 referrals is absolutely incredible. In this case, you must ignore the perceived tinyness of 1% and recognize it as being a huge number.