First, Facebook dethroned Google as the most trafficked web site in the United States, and now the social networking community has proven to have an extremely loyal following among news readers, potentially threatening the dominant position held by Google News. So says a recent Hitwise survey.
“A few weeks ago when I posted my blog entry about Facebook being the largest news reader, I received a few comments and emails noting that visitors aren’t as valuable if they don’t come back,” said Heather Hopkins, a senior online market analyst for Hitwise. “Advertisers and retailers need some assurance that visitors will return again and again.”
Loyal Facebook Users
Well, Hitwise data might provide that assurance. Hopkins’ latest revelation shows that visitors from Facebook.com are more loyal to news and media web sites than visitors from Google News.
Hopkins points to a specific example she discovered based on Hitwise data: Among the top five print media web sites for the week ending March 6, 2010, 78 percent of Facebook users returned to that site to consume more news, versus only 67 percent of Google News users making return visits.
How does that compare to broadcast media? The numbers are fairly similar. Hitwise shows that 77 percent Facebook users return to broadcast news sites compared to a 64 percent repeat-visitor rate for Google News users.
Getting more granular, Hitwise data show 81 percent of visits to CNN.com in the week of March 6, 2010 were returning visitors. While 84 percent of visitors to CNN.com that came from Facebook.com were returning visitors, only 72 percent from Google News were returning.
“I’ve been encouraged by some readers to include Google.com in this series. In most cases, Google.com is the number one source of traffic to these sites. Interestingly, visitors from Google are less likely to be returning visitors than average for…