ferral traffic drops for publishers such as BuzzFeed, Reuters and CNN
This year, many publishers have seen a decrease in traffic coming from X (formerly known as Twitter) compared to a previous year.
Why do we care? Being present in social media is important for brands, even though social media has lost its importance as a source of referrals for some publishers. It’s not safe to ignore social media or X entirely. Instead, monitor your traffic data and see if it’s the right time to rethink your audience growth strategies.
The average drop in traffic is 24%. According to an analysis by Automattic of a randomly selected set of 25 small and large publishers, the average fall in traffic from X was 24% from the first quarter of 2022 through the first quarter of 2023. Digiday also reported on this.
The numbers. According to SimilarWeb, ten publishers saw significant drops in X-referral traffic.
- BuzzFeed -70%
- Reuters -7%
- The Washington Post -48%
- The Wall Street Journal -42%
- CNN -41%
- Fox News -39%
- NBC News -38%
- The New York Times -35%
- The Guardian -29%
- BBC -20%
Five-year trend. Decrease in X/Twitter traffic did not start this year. Press Gazette reports that publishers of all sizes have watched this trend since 2018.
Chartbeat, a publisher analytics company, shows that Twitter referral traffic, which accounted for 1.9% of the total traffic to 1,350 publisher websites included in the analysis in April 2018, has fallen to just 1.2% in April 2019.
But. The referral traffic from X has not declined for all publishers. I compared Search Engine Land’s referral traffic from X for 2023 vs. the 2022 period (from Jan. 1, to August 23, 2018):
- The number of sessions has increased by 50%
- Pageviews are up by 62%.
Twitter/X was the third most popular social referral, just behind Facebook and LinkedIn. Social media accounted for 5,8% of all Search Engine Land session.
Search = Elon-proof. Some search marketers have abandoned Twitter after Elon Musk purchased it, which is now rebranded X. However, many continue to use the platform regularly. Others lurk or use less than they did in previous years. Search Engine Land could have grown because of the nature of the industry and the need to keep up with all the latest information.
The article X Referral Traffic Falls for Publishers like BuzzFeed Reuters and CNN first appeared on Search Engine land.