25
2009
Perez Hilton #1 Traffic Source Facebook
I noticed Ryan Spoon’s blog post (via Techmeme) on PerezHilton.com‘s growth this morning. I have followed the Perez Hilton site (for purely professional reasons) for some time. The website ranked #398 among All Categories of websites last week and #5 among Entertainment – Personalities websites (based on share of US Internet visits).
Searches for “perez hilton” were more than 300 times higher than for the celebrity “paris hilton” last week, confirming what Ryan Spoon suggests in his post that Perez Hilton is a strong brand. But what is perhaps more interesting is that the site’s #1 source of traffic is Facebook, not Google, as of last month. Last week, 8.70% of visits to PerezHilton.com came from Facebook compared to 7.62% from Google. The switch happened the week ending December 27th, 2008.
And this despite insults lobbed at Facebook on the Perez Hilton website and a call to boycott the social network.
By contrast, TMZ.com received 12.21% of its traffic from Google last week and only 3.82% from Facebook (with more traffic coming to the site from MySpace than from Facebook).
Did you mean 12/27/08?
Hi Heather,
It’s a similar situation in the UK: 2.5x as many searches for Perez than Paris last week. 19.1% of Perez Hilton’s traffic from Facebook, just 12.0% from Google UK and 2.3% from Google.com
Robin
Right – thanks for keeping me honest. I did mean 2008 and have updated the post accordingly.
Thanks, Heather
That’s really interesting. Most campaigns I’ve worked on have consistently shown Google as number one referrer. What factors would make FBook so strong?
Where do you get your stat’s from?
Heather,
Do you mean that people went to Facebook first then went to Perez Hilton by entering a new URL? Or did they search “Perez Hilton” on Facebook using the Facebook’s Live-powered web search for PerezHilton? Or perhaps clicked on a Perez Hilton link on Facebook?
I’m curious it it’s actual searches or downstream/upstream traffic.
Thanks!
Daniel
Daniel, I was reporting clickstream data – so people visiting Facebook before Perez Hilton, rather than search data.
Hope that clarifies.
Joe – The data in my post is from Hitwise. We report anonimized internet usage data through partnerships with ISPs. Here is a link to our methodology which provides a whole lot more detail on how we get our data.
http://www.hitwise.com/products-services/how-we-do-it.php
Thanks, Heather
Searches for “perez hilton” were more than 300 times higher than for the celebrity “paris hilton” last week, confirming what Ryan Spoon suggests in his post that Perez Hilton is a strong brand. But what is perhaps more interesting is that the site’s #1 source of traffic is Facebook, not Google, as of last month. Last week, 8.70% of visits to PerezHilton.com came from Facebook compared to 7.62% from Google. The switch happened the week ending December 27th, 2008.
http://www.methoo.com