Referral traffic from Google and Bing to Facebook has dropped dramatically, following the launch of Google’s “Search Plus Your World” service.
According to referral traffic statistics by Facebook analytics company PageLever, traffic from Google to Facebook has decreased significantly following the “Search Plus Your World” launch in January.
“Search Plus Your World” customises search results and integrates content from Google Plus into a users query. “Relevant tips, photos, and posts from your friends” are also part of the service according to Google.
PageLever statistics show a 51 percent drop in Facebook referral traffic from Google. The company studied 500 Facebook fan pages with at least 10,000 fans before and after “Search Plus Your World” was released.
Google drove 9.25 percent of external traffic to the pages before the service launched, and 4.52 percent after the launch.
Curiously, Microsoft’s Bing browser shows a similar trend despite Microsoft not launching a service similar to “Search Plus Your World”. The search engine’s referral traffic to Facebook dropped by 59 percent between 2011 and 2012.
According to PageLever founder Jeff Widman, Google’s referral traffic to Facebook actually began to dip three days before the service was launched.
“Referral traffic from both Google and Bing to Facebook Pages started dropping on January 7th. That’s three days before Google rolled out SPYW,” said Widman. “The timing is certainly suspicious, but it doesn’t explain why traffic from Bing plummeted as well.”
Read the full story at: Cnet.
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