The Lifestream of Jon Moss

WSJ.com traffic shows that Facebook is the new threat to Google

February 8 2010, 6:08pm

The proportion of traffic to WSJ.com from Facebook tripled over the past year - while that of Google News stayed static. Is this the real threat to Google?Perhaps Google's biggest threat doesn't come from Microsoft: perhaps it comes from Facebook. That might explain why it just splurged pots of money on an advert during the US Superbowl (a traditional piece of traditional media willy-waving): because it's worried about people using Facebook and other social networks instead of its product.I'd like at this point to show you the picture showing how the Wall Street Journal's website traffic from Google News has remained largely static, while that from Facebook has shot up. But as the picture has a "no commercial use" licence, I'll point you to it instead (here it is at the original size).What it shows is that while in January 2009 visits from Facebook to WSJ.com were about 1.3% of traffic, and from Google News were about 1.5% of traffic, by the end of January 2010 they were 3.45% from Facebook, and still around 1.3% for Google News.Conclusion from that slide: Google News isn't becoming more important as a traffic source for WSJ.com. But Facebook is.(And don't think that there's a paywall; if you follow a link from Google News to WSJ.com, you'll be allowed straight in to the full text of the article.)Combine that with a point made on Twitter by John Minnihan, the founder of Freepository, that the real threat to Google (or as he calls it, $GOOG, the stock ticker term) isn't from Microsoft with Bing plus Yahoo (which aren't gaining any scary amount of traffic), but instead from Facebook - as Minnihan commented, "With recent data showing a large uptick in 'Facebook as home page', $GOOG may well indeed need to remind emerging generation who/what it is. In that case, the $GOOG ad makes some business sense. Whatever the real reason, it has nothing to do with 'sharing video more widely'. If FB dev'ed an integrated web-wide search engine, think about how much traffic would evap. from $GOOG overnite. That's nightmare stuff."And that may well be the real threat. As Minnihan says, it's really not very believable that you're going to blow $5m simply because you thought a video about France was nice. No way.Meanwhile, bonus link: Spain's Telefonica has got into the act, saying that Google, Bing and Yahoo are using its networks "without paying anything at all". Es loco, si?FacebookSocial networkingGoogleSearch enginesCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds