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Referrer Breakdown

Platform annual growth by % (2018)

Platform trends by volume (2018)

Breakdown by referral source

On the following slides we look at each referral sources including:

• Word count per platform and compared to overall network

• Device breakdown, including AMP or FBIA % of mobile referral traffic

• Most popular categories by total views by platform

• Most “in-demand” categories defined by views per article. We believe these categories have the potential to have more “supply” (aka articles), even if they are not the most popular categories by total readership.

• A few take-aways from our analyst team on each platform

Bing Category: Search

Total annual growth in 2018: -2%

Average growth Month over Month growth: -0.2%

Expected MoM range: -6% to 6%

• Bing may not drive a lot of traffic for you, but if it does, the biggest differentiator from other search platforms is that it’s probably a reader on desktop.

• The word count distribution for traffic referred by Bing matches closely the overall network distribution.

Bing Category: Search

• Legal, News, and Politics categories are in abundance and also in demand. One might think these a safe bet for any search platforms given the current political climate, and while that’s not wrong, these categories rank higher in demand on Bing than they do on other search engines.

• Politics, for example, is the second highest in-demand category on Bing, but on Google, is third to last.

Drudge Report Category: Other


Average growth Month over Month growth: 3%


• While Drudge was down on the year, it has the widest variable range. This makes it the least predictable in terms of referrals of any of our top referrer sources.

• Longer content--indeed, the longest of long-form content (>1500 words)--has a place on Drudge Report, far more than it does other news aggregators. But don’t take that as a signal for you to double down on essays and cross your fingers for a Drudge pickup. That this aggregator sends the least reliable traffic any given month, and this analysis doesn’t consider whether those visitors actually stay and read those long articles.

• Mobile referrals don’t change much throughout the year (or at least no more or less than the rest of the traffic from Drudge). However, desktop referrals have slipped steadily throughout the year.

Drudge Report Category: Other

• It probably isn’t too surprising that Law, Gov’t & Politics is the most popular category and is also in high demand, though Science just barely beats it out for average views per post.

• Business and News categories have abundant views, but fall on the demand list, while the opposite is true for Personal Finance.

Facebook Category: Social

Total annual growth in 2018: 14%



• We as an industry have taken years off of our lives analyzing what does and doesn’t work on Facebook.

• Here’s the latest:

• It’s almost solely a mobile audience at this point, with less than 10% of referrals going to desktop.

• If you’re still using Facebook Instant Articles, those comprise 26% of Facebook’s mobile traffic these days.

• It sends slightly more referrals than average to shorter articles (less than 600 words), but generally aligns with the distribution we see across our entire network.

Facebook Category: Social

• Plenty of people find their news about Law, Government, and Politics through Facebook still, though more views per article go to posts in the “Legal issues” and “Pregnancy” category.

• There is a high demand for less hot-button issues: readers of Style & Fashion, Health & Fitness, and Clothing content signal a continued appetite for family and lifestyle content.

Flipboard Category: Other




• Here too, the uptick in Flipboard traffic is largely due to mobile referrals, 44% of which are AMP-enabled, though desktop and tablet refs have slipped slightly YoY. For an app that was originally oriented for tablet reading, this mobile shift clearly has worked out to their favor.

• Most of the content on Flipboard falls in our normal 200-600 length, but there’s a stronger preference for longer content (600-1000 words) than short form (<200 words).

Flipboard Category: Other

• After Law, Gov’t & Politics, Health & Fitness dominates this platform, in terms of popularity. In terms of views per article (demand) Health & Fitness tops the chart. Food & Drink, News, and Science also fare well in that regard.

• Interesting high-demand categories that don’t have a lot of total views include Psychology/Psychiatry, Style & Fashion, and Desserts & Baking.

Google Category: Search


Average growth Month over Month growth: 0.2%


• Mobile is up, and it’s split 50/50 on AMP and non-AMP traffic.

• Google sends the smallest desktop percentage of any Search referral, though, in volume, it is still massively outpaces the other platforms. Desktop referrals have started declining, going downwards in May 2018.

Google Category: Search

• Google’s market dominance and the breadth of content they index accounts for the mix of current events and more practical categories that are high in demand: Television, News, Weather, Business.

• There’s an overabundance in Food & Drink and Health & Fitness categories, considering they fall lower on the list for demand. These are, no doubt, search-friendly categories of content, but perhaps the supply outstrips the demand, and the winners of the search results may take all (the traffic, that is).

Google News Category: Other




• Posts featured on Google News are mostly between 200-600 words. While other lengths still have a place on Google News, long-form content may not be what Google News ends up optimizes for in its algorithm.

• Mobile growth for Google News was dramatic in 2018. Its mobile referrals started the year at 29%, and closed out December at 64%.

• Desktop drove consistent referrals throughout the year, so remember that Google News growth is a) entirely mobile, and b) entirely AMP.

Google News Category: Other

• Another platform where Law, Gov’t & Politics dominates the views. Categories with higher views per article get specific: Legal Issues (a sub-category of Law, Gov’t & Politics) tops the list. With Space/Astronomy close behind.

• Sports, on the other hand, is in high supply but does not fare as well in terms of average views per post. Perhaps the volume of sports posts or the specificity of teams contributes to the low demand per article.

Google - Other Category: Other



Expected MoM range: 5% to 15%

• Chrome content suggestions “Articles for You,” also Google Discover, also thorn in the side of audience strategists everywhere. The amount of traffic these Google products drive is not insubstantial, yet whatever curates that content remains largely a mystery.

• But considering Google’s enthusiastic iteration of search “journeys,” “single answers,” and “query-less ways to get information,” I would recommend keeping your SEO tidy--which won’t hurt.

Google - Other Category: Other

• Consider that the top categories in views fall quite a bit when comparing to views/article.

• If you, like me, are wondering “Who on earth is reading so much about Palmtops/PDAs in 2019??” That’s IAB’s obsolete way of categorizing a whole slew of smart devices, from Apple’s latest iPhone to Samsung foldable tablets.

Instagram Category: Social




• Likely because Instagram is an Facebook owned business, AMP clearly isn’t a priority for their mobile presence (which, is almost their entire presence).

• Word Count leans toward shorter posts, but not dramatically so.

• Even for a social platform, month-over-month traffic from Instagram is kind of all over the place. Whether this has to do with the platform, content trends, or individual sites starting and stopping Instagram strategies is unclear.

Instagram Category: Social

• Most popular categories are hardly a surprise: Style & Fashion, Health & Fitness, Clothing — the stuff Instagram influencers are made of. Food & Drink has lower demand, perhaps due to an oversupply of posts/articles.

• Look past generalities: there’s a bounty of celebrity weddings and awards ceremonies, but some of the top stories here included Nike’s smart shoes, LGBTQ representation in fashion, and speaking out on mental health issues.

LinkedIn Category: Social




• LinkedIn offers a huge opportunity for distributing longer content, with nearly as many articles on the long-side of normal (600-1000 words) as those in our typical 200-600 word range.

• The platform has become an increasingly mobile experience, with 80% of readers coming from LinkedIn reading on a mobile device. 39% of those mobile referrers are AMP.

LinkedIn Category: Social

• The categories with highest views per post align exactly with what you expect out of a business-to-business networking platform (especially if you read “Shopping” as “Retail.”)

• LinkedIn is one of the few referral platforms where Law, Gov’t & Politics doesn’t top the list, even though we generally find elsewhere that politics and business articles have a heavy cross-over of topics.

Pinterest Category: Social




• Unlike other platforms, much of the content referred to by Pinterest is very short form. This may be largely due to a high demand for Food & Drink and Desserts & Baking leading to recipes and/or image heavy posts, as Pinterest itself is an image heavy network.

• Pinterest is mostly mobile, with 19% of those clicks on AMP pages. However, it has the highest percentage of desktop referral views of any social platform, which signals a very different browsing experience.

• Pinterest’s image recognition, crackdowns on spam, and targeted marketing initiatives are reminiscent of best practices from Google and Facebook. This is huge for anyone in e-commerce and D2C, and Pinterest really wants to work with you.

Pinterest Category: Social

• Pinterest, a search engine disguised as a social platform, caters to image-heavy lifestyle content, but with a few surprises around what’s in demand. Business ranks the highest for average views per post (perhaps there aren’t that many to begin with), and Woodworking (!) makes its way up the list.

Reddit (No App) Category: Social




• We don’t dive too deep into Reddit, because its app traffic does not send referral information, and as they’ve been pushing the app experience, it’s likely that we’re only looking at some percentage of the total traffic from Reddit users overall.

• And of course, if users are not on the app, they tend to be on desktop, with 60% of referral traffic coming from desktop.

• These users also over index on visiting long-reads as opposed to very short articles.

Reddit (No-App) Category: Social

• The site, which has publicly talked about how difficult it is to police the conversations around conspiracy theories and spreading fake information, sends the majority of its views to Law, Gov’t & Politics articles. The views/article on average are much more evenly distributed.

• Reddit actively wants to work with publishers to engage audiences on their platform.

SmartNews Category: Other



Expected MoM range: 1% to 17%

• SmartNews is our most reliably growing news aggregator, where even a low-traffic month may still generate a +1% bump in traffic, but remember that it is still small in terms of total referrals.

• As an app, referred traffic is exclusively mobile and half--HALF--of its traffic is AMP-enabled.

• Outside of Google owned platforms, this is the highest percentage of referred traffic to AMP pages, though many other platforms see significant traffic from AMP.

SmartNews Category: Other

• As an app that only shows content of news publishers it partners with, it’s unsurprising that news and politics top the views list, though pure news content tends to get more views per article (as does weather content).

• There’s still a good amount of articles about business, health & fitness, science, and food drink, meaning partnerships likely can be successful with a wide variety of publishers.

Twitter Category: Social


Average growth Month over Month growth: -2%


• Twitter is another AMP heavy platform, with 48% of mobile traffic (which is a large majority of total referred traffic).

• Outside a slight bump up in May, June, and July Twitter had one of the steadiest, and largest declines of the referrals we looked at. Twitter’s user growth has been declining, though the company also attributes this to them clearing out bots and non-human users.

• Twitter tends to be one of the first platforms where news gets shared and many media outlets rely on it for taking the temperature around a conversation, even if it doesn’t end up driving the most views. How important is that for publishers? TBD.

Twitter Category: Social

• Twitter really seems to have a narrow cadence: Law, Gov’t & Politics, Legal Issues, and News dominate the most viewed and also highest demand spaces on this platform, as does Business.

• Sports content drives views, but drops off when it comes to views per article, which seems to be true for sports categories across multiple platforms and may reflect the high volume of total sports content.

Yahoo - Search Category: Search




• Yahoo Search sends traffic to as much short-form content as it does the normal 200-600 word count reporting. Perhaps it prioritizes shorter posts, or unlike Google, perhaps it doesn’t take into account how long someone stays on a page after clicking on a search result.

• Desktop is down annually, and considering that it is currently largely sending traffic from a desktop audience, I would not put much stock in a come back without major mobile product advancements.


• Yahoo Search, like Google, indexes a variety of currents events and content relevant to day-to-day, with an readership showing a higher views per post in the Style & Fashion category.

• Television and Music are other categories that jump higher in demand, while Sports and Health & Fitness are popular slip down the list.

Yahoo - Other Category: Other




• Yahoo’s annual traffic referrals has taken a hit, with a particularly high drop from desktop referrals. For a largely desktop audience, that’s a pretty big deal: desktop referrals are down from 39.5M to 18.6M annually, barely higher than its mobile audience.


• Despite the volume declines, if you’re producing content around fiscal responsibility or the auto industry, you may not need to worry, at least for a few years perhaps. Personal Finance, Retirement Planning, and a smattering of auto-related categories are in high demand on Yahoo.

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