One Googler worth Ten Facebookers

One Googler worth Ten Facebookers

As a web publisher, two things really matter when it comes to making money: driving lots of traffic, and making sure that traffic converts into ad clicks.  Looking at a sample of nearly 70 million impressions across the Chitika ad network, we’ve found that Google is worlds better than Facebook at doing both.

In the sample, Google users clicked on ads 0.7% of the time, while Facebook users clicked at a 0.08% rate.  Add that to the fact that Google sent about 89x the raw traffic, and it becomes obvious that a web publisher’s #1 most important goal should be to maximize their traffic from search.

This isn’t to say that a Facebook presence is worthless, but the numbers imply two things: one, that most activity on Facebook stays on Facebook; and two, Facebook traffic simply doesn’t come with the same intent carried by Google traffic.  When a user comes from search, they have a singular goal in mind: to find what they’re looking for, and be done with it.  Social media traffic – especially Facebook – is more a reflection of the intent of a user’s friends, which doesn’t translate well to the traffic’s desire to convert.

For more information on this study, contact:

Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
insights@chitika.com