A recent study released by Outbrain shows that social media isn’t the huge traffic referral many assumed it was. In fact, the news aggregate, Drudge Report, refers twice as much traffic as Twitter and Facebook combined. Seriously.
And notice, I listed Twitter first in that statement? That was intentional. Because Twitter is currently referring 60% more traffic than Facebook.
The lesson here is that network size isn’t everything. The site intention matters. Drudge Report is a news aggregate. Nothing more. People come here specifically to find the latest news. Whereas people go to Facebook to see the latest news in their friend’s lives.
Organic search refers 37% of all traffic. News and content sites refer 56% of all traffic. And those gigantic social networks refer a measly 7% of all traffic.