An audience stat study by Nielsen shows that the Drudge Report sends more traffic to news sites than do social media giants, Facebook and Twitter.
In regards to the top 25 news sites in the U.S., the Drudge Report ranked as as a significant traffic driver to all but six, and either 2nd or 3rd to twelve of them. In fact, Drudge provided more than 30% of the traffic to the Daily Mail, 19% of the NY Post’s traffic, 15% of the Washington Post’s, and 11% of both Boston.com’s and Fox News’.
This outpaces Facebook, and blows away Twitter’s referral traffic. What does this mean? It means that Drudge users trust the site, and trust where they’re being sent. It makes sense that Facebook users click through more links than Twitter users, since Facebook users are typically closer (friends and family) to those they connect with.