According to a Press Gazette story, prominent internet analytics firms said that the data showed Facebook’s referral traffic for big news publishers had decreased by 50% in just a single year.
According to the analysis, hundreds of news media companies saw a progressive reduction in referral traffic—even up to 50%—as a result of Google’s first fundamental algorithm update of 2024, which did not favor the great majority of publishers.
A total of 792 news and media websites were tracked by digital intelligence platform Similarweb and news publisher analytics company Chartbeat. Referrals from social networking sites, especially Facebook, have sharply decreased, according to Chartbeat. Referrals to news websites have dropped dramatically over the last six years, from a startling 1.3 billion in March 2018 to just 561 million last month.
Numerous news outlets appear to have experienced a decline in traffic as a result of Google’s search algorithm modifications within the past 18 months. The numerous upgrades that were released in March made this worse.
The first quarter of 2024 saw the fewest page views, according to major news corporations as well. For example, Reach, the largest commercial news publisher in the UK, has recorded a third decrease in page views during the same period.
However, the ripple effect persisted in other sectors of the business. Nine B2C and four B2B publishers were polled by the UK Association of Online Publishers and the Deloitte business, and the results showed that the move by Facebook to deprioritize news in user feeds was a major factor in the 47% decline in publishers’ income in the last quarter of 2023.
Publishers that are smaller have suffered considerably more. For the 316 smaller publications in the analysis (those with fewer than 10,000 average daily page views), the combined page view referrals from Facebook are only 2% of what they were in March 2018!
Publishers with a youth focus, such as Unilad, Bust, and Upworthy, on the other hand, displayed a comparatively stable or little decline in the reach of referrals. Between 2021 and 2024, the percentage of social referrals from Facebook to the website of the women’s publisher climbed from 6% to 11%.
A number of prominent news publishers displayed a sharp decrease. According to The Independent, Facebook accounted for 6% of social referrals in 2024 compared to 19% in 2021. Mirror’s share dropped from 22% to 7%, while Daily Star’s share dropped from 25% to 5%.
Aside from Google’s modifications, news media outlets were impacted by Facebook’s algorithm that prioritizes “family and friends” over News Feed.
I am a dedicated student currently in my seventh semester, pursuing a degree in International Relations. Alongside my academic pursuits, I am actively engaged in the professional field as a content writer at the Rangeinn website.