Understanding internet attention in Parse.ly’s network of publishers REPORT PERIOD APRIL & MAY 2018 Traic sources Online content Topics THESocial networks AUTHORITY REPORT Facebook Twitter 2018Search Engines traffic sources by content categories and topics: Google Referral trendBing benchmarks for Facebook, Google, and others for 23 categories Editorial promotion Lastsite year, home we pagesanalyzed referral traffic data from 2016 to understand So for this report, we wanted to examine what the audiences of site section pages how people discover articles by topic. We reported on where 2018 care about: where do they find stories to read or watch, and audiencesOther camesources from for 12 different topics. Among our findings: what has changed in the two years since we last looked at this data? 60% of readersFlipboard found technology articles through Google search, We turned to Parse.ly’s network data to get up-to-date on the major while 87%Google of audiences News found lifestyle content on Facebook. But referrers for articles by category and the topics that resonate most nothing stays static in digital media. with readers on those platforms. Direct trac Email At Instantthe beginning messaging of 2018, Facebook’s algorithm changed. Even The data analyzed in this report includes 8 billion page views for before the official announcement, a reversal in overall referral 1 million articles across our network of thousands of sites from How someone found a piece of Topics are automatically detected in Internet-wide trends and insights into traffic occurred, as Google overtook Facebook as the top external April and May 2018. We used natural language processing to classify content. The originating site that content. Topics can be people, individual topics. A visit to a post can be broughtreferrer ato person media tosites. a post. From February to October 2017,companies, referral places, events,our and network’s things. content intoassociated standardized with multiplecategories topics and relevantbecause traffic volume from Facebook decreased by 25% while Google topics. Individual articlescontent in this typically study can discusses be associated multiple with topics. more traffic, with the help of AMP, took off. than one category and contain several topics. See the diagram below for more detail. Tech article Social networks Facebook Politics Twitter Search Engines Bus./Tech article Google Business Bing Editorial promotion site home pages Business article Tech site section pages Other sources Topic Flipboard Politics article Topic Google News Topic Direct trac Topic Email Instant messaging Traic sources Online content Categories & topics How someone found online Natural language processing is used to Analysis of traic at the category and content. The originating site that classify content into IAB categories and topic-level allow publishers to understand brought a person to a post. detect relevant topics. Topics can be people, what people are interested in and how companies, places, things, events, or ideas. they are finding that content. VISITVISIT US US SEESEE PAST PAST REPORTS REPORTS AND AND SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE FOR TO FUTURE RELEASES WWW.PARSE.LYWWW.PARSE.LY WWW.PARSE.LY/AUTHORITYWWW.PARSE.LY/AUTHORITY Article categories ranked by largest REPORT PERIOD APRIL & MAY 2018 Google search percentages Facebook other external sources Google search Technology & Computing 16% 21% 63% While the referral trends shifted away from Facebook and Home & Garden toward Google, this didn’t change much in terms of bringing a 15% 28% 57% major third-party player into the forefront (though the verdict Personal Finance is still out on Apple News). The combined referrals from 26% 22% 52% external traffic sources other than Google search and Sports Facebook increased roughly 3% from 2017 to 2018.1 So, 26% 23% 51% content creators looking to scale their audience still rely on Business Google and Facebook. 23% 27% 50% Careers 24% 30% 45% Arts & Entertainment Google search: reviews and how-tos 34% 21% 45% Science Even a quick glance at the list of categories matches aggregate 31% 25% 45% trends from the overall decline in Facebook traffic. Visitors Hobbies & Interests primarily accessed articles in the majority of the categories 34% 22% 44% analyzed over this time period through Google search. 14 of Automotive the 23 categories we analyzed had over 40% of their external 34% 22% 44% traffic come from Google search. Topics that covered reviews Pets 35% 22% 43% (Technology, Automotive, Arts & Entertainment) or how-tos News (Personal Finance, Home & Garden, Hobbies & Interests) made 26% 35% 40% the top of the list. Religion & Spirituality 34% 26% 39% Education 41% 24% 35% Facebook: lifestyle content Law, Gov’t & Politics Parse.ly’s past analysis of 2016 data found that the majority of 37% 30% 33% readers accessed lifestyle content through Facebook. Real Estate 44% 24% 32% Facebook remains the primary referral traffic source for lifestyle content today. In fact, of all the categories with a Lifestyle categories Family & Parenting higher percentage of Facebook traffic, only three (Education, 70% 10% 20% Law, Gov’t & Politics, and Real Estate) were not within the Food & Drink lifestyle group. Taking a closer look at the lifestyle categories, 36% 15% 49% Facebook dominated all but two (Food & Drink and Health & Health & Fitness Fitness) of the seven categories. We explore lifestyle content 40% 20% 40% more on the next page. Shopping 50% 15% 34% Society 54% 27% 19% Style & Fashion 1. See the “Top referrers in the Parse.ly network” chart on 59% 19% 22% page 9, or visit www.parse.ly/referrer-dashboard to see Travel referral changes over time. 43% 23% 34% VISIT US SEE PAST REPORTS AND SUBSCRIBE TO FUTURE RELEASES WWW.PARSE.LY WWW.PARSE.LY/AUTHORITY REPORT PERIOD APRIL & MAY 2018 Facebook still strong for The distributed content wars: lifestyle content Google AMP has won External traic sources for all content The general “News” category offers a prime example of how in lifestyle categories Google is winning the distributed content wars. Most readers accessed News through Google search, with AMP driving 27% of Facebook other Google search the traffic—a higher AMP percentage than any other category. 45% 18% 37% News also had the most traffic from other sources (35%) of all categories, including Google News and other Google sources. number of page views to Trends in mobile growth and developments in Google’s platform lifestyle categories articles in each category may have helped drive its growth as a referrer. Style & Fashion 778M Food & Drink 743M Apple News could also show up as a significant contender 629M Health & Fitness alongside AMP and Facebook Instant Articles if it were integrated Travel 181M with Parse.ly publishers and sharing data about engagement. Society 115M Family & Parenting 105M Distribution channel traic by content category Shopping 80M channel’s percentage of views for content in each category AMP Facebook Instant Articles There was a range of traffic from Facebook to lifestyle content on Law, Gov’t & Politics 20% 11% an individual category level. The Family & Parenting category had Style & Fashion 8% 3% the most Facebook traffic (70%) and the least other traffic (10%) Food & Drink 8% 2% than any other category. On the other side of the spectrum, Health Business 20% 5% Health & Fitness 18% 8% & Fitness was more balanced, with equal traffic from Facebook Tech. & Computing 18% 3% and Google Search. Arts & Entmt. 16% 5% Sports 25% 11% Additionally, looking at the combined traffic for all articles Science 16% 6% categorized by one of the lifestyle categories underscores the Travel 15% 7% outsized role Facebook plays. Facebook represents 45% of the News 27% 9% external traffic sources for this lifestyle group and has the highest Automotive 21% 6% percentage of Facebook traffic when compared to all non-lifestyle Society 8% 4% categories. Family & Parenting 12% 9% Education 14% 9% 6% With their audiences primarily finding content through Facebook, Personal Finance 18% Shopping 16% 12% brands and publishers operating in the lifestyle verticals have food Religion & Spirit. 19% 10% for thought. Do creators of lifestyle content have nothing to worry Pets 15% 6% about other than continuing to serve quality content to their Hobbies & Interests 12% 2% audience on Facebook? Or, given the fickleness of Facebook, Real Estate 15% 9% should they reevaluate the depth of their reliance on the platform Home & Garden 9% 1% and see if there are ways to diversify traffic sources even more? Careers 21% 5% VISIT US SEE PAST REPORTS AND SUBSCRIBE TO FUTURE RELEASES WWW.PARSE.LY WWW.PARSE.LY/AUTHORITY REPORT PERIOD APRIL & MAY 2018 Flipboard referrals by category Twitter referrals by category Pinterest referrals by category of category of category of category News 3.7% News 5.2% Home & Garden 13.4% 5.4M referrals 7.6M referrals 2.3M referrals Science 3.5% Careers 5.0% Hobbies & Interests 4.8% 12.3M 0.5M 1.6M Law, Gov’t & Politics 3.2% Law, Gov’t & Politics 4.7% Food & Drink 4.5% 34.5M 50.8M 28.2M Careers 3.2% Religion & Spirituality 4.5% Style & Fashion 2.1% 0.3M 2.5M 14.1M Business 2.9% Education 4.4% Arts & Entertainment 2.0% 16.3M 3.7M 8.9M Health & Fitness 2.7% Sports 4.0% Society 1.6% 14.5M 17.6M 1.6M Looking beyond Facebook and Google search referrals non-search Google News referrals by category of category So what about that “other” traffic? We took a look at major referrers outside of Google News 4.7% 6.9M referrals search and Facebook to see which kinds of content resonate with readers there. If you write about one of these categories or manage a site or section dedicated to one, Law, Gov’t & Politics 3.7% 39.4M looking beyond Facebook and Google search referrals could be even more important Automotive 3.0% than zeroing in on aggregate trends.