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Google Top News Site Traffic Influencer

posted on May 9, 2011


Here at Marketing Pilgrim we like Pew studies. They are among the few that seem to be less about promotion and more about finding out the truth.

The latest study, Navigating News Online, shows that Google is still the top influencer for news sites. What is interesting to note though is that while it is still far behind, Facebook is making its move on Google’s domain.

Now a look at Facebook.

Right now the numbers don’t cry out real competition but it’s hard not to recognize that Facebook has momentum on its side. As a result, Google is probably more than a little nervous.

One other funny note. Notice how noted content farm Examiner.com fared with Google at the time of this survey which is reporting on traffic during the pre-Panda Update era. I wonder how much that has changed?

Your thoughts?


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  • http://www.brickmarketing.com/social-marketing-company.htm Nick Stamoulis

    One of the advantages Facebook has over Google when it comes to news is that news stories on Facebook just fall into your lap. Someone you know Likes or Shares a story and leaves a one sentence response about why they read it. You don’t have to comb through a newspaper (paper or online) to find interesting stories. Half the work is done for you.

  • http://firstnamedotlastname.com Walter

    Since the absolute percentage (and total traffic) from Google is so much bigger, it would be more interesting to see the 2 above charts combined. That way it would really tell a traffic source data point, rather that what at first glance looks like an apples to apples comparison.

  • http://public-propaganda.blogspot.com/ James Murphy

    This data is very interesting. I would like to view some demographic data regarding each of those news sources. Although just speculating, I think younger users are interested in important current events and Facebook provides an ideal platform for promoting what is important among people users know. I question if the majority of users linking to these news sites from Facebook are concerned with breaking or current news articles.

  • http://www.niuzer.com Catalin

    I saw in another article related to this information that Google is the main source of traffic for old website news and Facebook is rising for the new news websites. I don’t recall the article link :(

    Although, I wonder what percent of traffic do the news aggregators like niuzer.com bring to the news websites. Any studies on news aggregators?

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