Meta's Shift Causes 50% Drop in Publisher Referrals from Facebook

May 10, 2024 at 7:54:52 AM - Trending 🔥

TL;DR Facebook referrals to news sites have dropped 50% in a year, marking a continued decline for publishers as Meta moves away from news. Chartbeat and Similarweb data show a 58% plunge in Facebook traffic to 792 news sites over six years. Google's algorithm changes have also reduced traffic. UK's largest news publisher, Reach, saw a 33% page view drop in Q1 2024. Smaller publishers face the brunt, with Facebook referrals at just 2% of 2018 levels.

Meta's Shift Causes 50% Drop in Publisher Referrals from Facebook

Meta's shift away from news content has led to a 50% decline in Facebook referral traffic to publisher websites, according to a report from Chartbeat and Similarweb. The study analyzed traffic to 792 news and media websites.

Aggregate Facebook traffic to these sites has plunged 58% from 1.3 billion in March 2018 to 561 million in March 2024. Facebook now drives less than a quarter of the visits than it had in 2018, down from 30% to 7%.

Number of Facebook referrals by publisher size

This decline is due to Meta's gradual reduction of news content in its apps, including ending its Facebook News project in December last year. Meta's shift towards AI-recommended updates, primarily video clips, in user feeds has reduced its reliance on news posts.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has noted that users do not want politics to dominate their experience on the platform. This shift away from news and politics is impacting news publishers, but could be a positive change overall, considering the broader impacts.

Meta's approach with Threads, its Twitter competitor app, is to focus on amplifying more positive, light-hearted, entertainment-based content. While this shift is not great news for publishers, it could make social media a more positive and beneficial experience overall.

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