Casual News Users Referred by Google, Other Search Engines; Facebook a Factor Sometimes

A new report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism provides new evidence of the role Facebook now is playing in driving traffic to media sites. "Casual users" who are those more likely to be drawn to major news stories now make up the majority of the online news audience.

Google is still the main outside entry point, driving on average 30 percent of a news site's traffic. About 60 percent to 65 percent of visits are from direct traffic.

In 2010, all but one of the top sites for which there was referral data derived at least some of their audience through Facebook.

Facebook ranked as the second- or third-highest referral source for six of the largest 25 news sites, with Huffingtonpost.com getting the biggest share of traffic from the social network, at eight percent. NYTimes.com got six percent of traffic from Facebook. Despite its growth, Twitter still isn't a major factor in sending visitors to news sites.

Of course, that last tidbit has a nuance. Heavy Twitter users are more likely to be driven to news sites than heavy Facebook users, one would suspect. Some Twitter users might not be heavy Facebook users, for example, so more of those user redirects would come from Twitter than Facebook. The Pew study might simply be reflective of the bigger Facebook user base.

Facebook Driving Traffic