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By on February 5, 2010

Facebook Sends More News Traffic than Google News

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Last week, Facebook posted instructions on how to make FB your “personalized news channel” and minimize nonnewsworthy clutter on their blog. Inspired, Hitwise looked at the numbers, and it looks like Facebook is already well on its way as a news starting point.

Hitwise’s stats show that Facebook is well ahead of some other news aggregators in terms of sending downstream traffic to news websites:

After Google (17.32%), Yahoo (7.89%) and msn (4.43%), Facebook was the fourth most popular referrer for news websites. Says Hitwise:

News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site’s traffic. To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week [check out their downstream retail traffic] and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular).

Clearly, news isn’t the most popular post-Facebook activity, but the chart shows that it’s been growing steadily over the last several months. (Any ideas what the spike in April was about? Conficker?)

What do you think? Will Facebook be the next big destination for news?


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8 comments on “Facebook Sends More News Traffic than Google News”

  1. RobertKCole Says:

    February 5th, 2010 at 4:12 pm

    Wow – combined with Facebook’s announcement of taking its advertising in house and using Bing as its search engine, I believe this firmly transitions Facebook from a platform that people said “could” become the dominant front door to the web into a platform that “can” achieve its destiny.

    I would be fairly certain that in unprompted research the number of Facebook users that name news as even a Facebook related activity would be minimal. While even a small portion of activity from 400 million users can drive significant traffic, seeing a nearly 3x multiple over a specialized news site like Google News is staggering.

    I’ve got a feeling that this little stat may be the nail in the coffin for the Facebook naysayers.
    .-= RobertKCole´s last blog ..Ardanaieseig, Scotland =-.

  2. Web host Says:

    February 6th, 2010 at 12:41 am

    Hope all these move will make Facebook more popular than Google. Google is dominating the Web World and its hurts many business if Google only penalize them or Google don’t rank them well.

  3. Facebook Sends More News Traffic than Google News | Daily Hot Topic Says:

    February 6th, 2010 at 5:17 am

    [...] posted here: Facebook Sends More News Traffic than Google News Posted in Facebook, google | Tags: and-minimize, clutter-on-their, Facebook, google, [...]

  4. Mike Bensonn Says:

    February 6th, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    Facebook might soon become traffic source number one for most websites! Yes, before Google.
    .-= Mike Bensonn´s last blog ..The Social Search Engine =-.

  5. Lo and behold: Facebook just might be hotter than Google News among information gatherers | ziona's Blog Says:

    February 9th, 2010 at 1:59 am

    [...] days, Facebook may be generating more hits than news aggregators like Google News, according to Marketing Pilgrim. Clearly, many people end up spending far more time than they should on Facebook, so why not get a [...]

  6. Mohamed Adam Jr Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 10:47 am

    I still don’t thing facebook become the number traffic source before google, come’on google is a search engine!
    .-= Mohamed Adam Jr´s last blog ..XanGo Training Tips That Will Increase Results In Your Team =-.

  7. Joel P. The New Income System Says:

    February 20th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

    Will Facebook replace what Google can do?…I don’t think so!..
    both of them are good tools and can have their positive
    and negative sides.

    Web users go to Google to search,
    Then they go to Facebook to hang out and share,drive traffic
    from Facebook to their website.
    “Both of them are looking for the same thing”

    “To figure out how to monetize the traffic source”

    Very Good coments to read here!

  8. Bill from Investment Fund Says:

    February 25th, 2010 at 9:32 am

    This news is a big surprise but facebook is really investing in delevoping and in a matter of time will become at the same level with google who is sort of a mogul.
    .-= Bill from Investment Fund´s last blog ..House prices at all-time highs =-.