Google vs Facebook

More people read news on Facebook than Google

  Facebook now accounts for more of the traffic to news sites than Google, according to latest results.

Links shared on Facebook and Twitter have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time, said results from the analytics firm Parse.Ly.

"The company's latest estimates show that social-media sources accounted for 43% of the traffic to the Parse.Ly network of media sites, while Google accounted for just 38%," Fortune magazine quoted Parse.Ly's chief technical officer Andrew Montalenti as saying.

Google vs Facebook

This is not the first time that Facebook has edged past Google in the traffic-referral race.

"The social network took the top spot by a small amount last October, but this month's lead is far more dramatic.

It is clear that search has hit a kind of plateau and is not really growing any more as a referral source for media.

"There's a lot of effort among media companies being placed on specific social channels like Twitter, but our data shows that Twitter is basically a distant traffic source".

"Facebook is more like a black box in terms of how it operates. And yet it's this huge and growing traffic source".

Traffic analytics firm Parse.ly says its latest figures show the giant social network now accounts for more of the traffic to news sites than Google.

Anyone who works for a major news website or publisher knows that social referrals—that is, links that are shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter—have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time. Now, according to new numbers from the traffic-analytics service Parse.ly, Facebook is no longer just vying with Google but has overtaken it by a significant amount.

Courtesy : TOI