The FINANCIAL — After surpassing Google as the most visited site in the US in the second week of this month, Facebook has just become a more trusted source for news than Google News.
The data was collected in the first week of March and analyzed the unique viewers to these sites and where they were directed from, Top News reports. Further, it was determined as to how many users ended up coming back multiple times from the same originating source.
Based on the click stream data for the week ending March 6 for five topmost news media sites, Hitwise discovered that as many as 78 percent of the users returned to Facebook for accessing more news stories, as compared to 67 percent Google News users, according to ITProPortal. In addition, 77 percent users of the social networking platform came back to the site to broadcast online news portals there, while only 64 percent of the Google News users returned to the site for the same.
TG Daily reports that Heather Hopkins, an analyst for the firm, noted that results from both Google News and Facebook were promising. "This reinforces the long-term value to News and Media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook," she said in an Eweek story.
"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 either Google News or Facebook," Hopkins said, according to Newsfactor.com. "This reinforces the long term value to News and Media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook.
The Hitwise survey claimed that the visitors from Facebook. com are found to be far more devoted towards news media sites as compared to visitors from any other site, Top News informs. Facebook also bagged the U. S. patent this year for the news feeds, making social-networking a hit with users.
Last week Facebook overtook Google for the first time as the most visited website in the US, according to research firm Hitwise, which clocked Facebook at 7.07 per cent of all web traffic, just ahead of Google's 7.03 per cent, The Australian reports. Mindshare global head of social media Ciaran Norris predicted that Facebook's revenues would build quickly from an estimated $500m last year to more than $2 billion by next year."Some of the biggest direct digital advertisers are shifting budgets from Google to Facebook," he said. "Facebook allows for interaction, engagement and branding but also targeted messaging."
According to the same source, he predicted that within the next year or two, Facebook's revenues would be "in the billions". "Facebook are quite obviously going after TV budgets," he said. "The web has always been about cost per click. (Facebook) sees itself as being able to do the same job that TV advertising is able to do, which is connect with people on an emotional level."
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