Meta has some issues to address as a new report from Chartbeat and Similarweb demonstrated that Facebook referral traffic to publisher websites has declined by 50% over the past year as the company continues to shift away from news related content.
Per the report, which analyzed traffic to 792 news and media websites, using third-party tracking data to measure data related to Facebook referral traffic, the trends show a marked decline from 2018 to 2024, as Facebook now drives less than a quarter of the visits than it had been back in 2018, per data.
Those numbers are staggering – down from 30% in March 2018 to 7% in March 2024.
According to the Press Gazette: “Aggregate Facebook traffic to news and media sites that have been tracked by the Chartbeat since 2018 shows that referrals to the sites have plunged by 58% in the last six years from 1.3 billion in March 2018 to 561 million last month. Traffic from Facebook fell by 50% in the last 12 months alone as the decline shows little sign of slowing.”
Meta has shifted to the utilization of more AI-recommended updates in user feeds which are rooted mostly in videos clips as the company shifts away from the prior reliance on news posts as well as less emphasis on user engagement such as likes and comments to drive content reach.
