It’s time once again for my latest blog status update.
Site traffic is mainly from Google; not so much social media
Despite the dominance of social networks in the news and internet culture/attention, my own social media presence isn’t exactly an “Instagram influencer” level status of popularity, let alone a driver of traffic to my site.
Checking site statistics for over two months (June 15 to August 15), total site traffic is 15,186 visits (from all sources) over the two months, or an average of about 253 visits a day. The sources of site traffic (by percentages) are:
- Search engines: 79.9% (12,140 visits)
- Direct entry: 19.1% (2,904 visits)
- Websites: 0.5% (75 visits)
- Social networks: 0.4% (64 visits)
That’s right, 80% of my site’s traffic comes from search engines (i.e., Google). Throw in “direct entry” (i.e., the site or post URLs are directly entered into the browser), and that covers 99% of all traffic sources.
If wondering, “Websites” refers to sites that link to my site. Out of social networks’ remaining 0.4%, the sources of traffic are:
- Twitter: 0.3% (45 visits)
- Facebook: 0.1% (8 visits)
- Instagram: 0% (8 visits)
- Reddit: 0% (6 visits)
- Pinterest: 0% (1 visit)
The analytics software I use, Matomo, doesn’t break out any figures for Bluesky or Mastodon. It records seven visits under “Websites” for Bluesky’s domain; however, there’s no clear sign of any Mastodon traffic. Still, as depressing as it sounds, it seems I could stop using all social media and it wouldn’t really affect traffic to my blog.
As for how much traffic “should” come from social media, there’s no clear answer. However, it doesn’t seem very high from the few sources I’ve found. A LinkedIn article quoted a survey stating an average of 6.44% of websites’ traffic came from social media in 2019. Meanwhile, a HubSpot survey is a bit more generous, stating 16% of website traffic came from Facebook, Twitter, and the like. So while my site’s traffic from social media could be higher, I suppose I shouldn’t worry too much about relying on Elon Musk to prop up my site. (Thank goodness.)
Via Matomo, here’s a few pie charts:
My social media usage
As for the social networks above, it’s interesting that I still get Twitter traffic despite no longer using that platform, and setting my account to private. It’s likely for the post about how to deal with Twitter trolls, despite that Twitter’s recent changes make it harder to do so. Out of the remaining social networks: I still use Facebook and Instagram, even if I’m not wild about either; I briefly tried Reddit years ago, but quit using it and haven’t returned; and Pinterest I’ve used off and on. Everything else either is a non-starter (I’m not interested in trying TikTok) or I infrequently use (LinkedIn, Tumblr).
Of course, I admit I don’t exactly have a giant number of followers on social media; outside of Mastodon (my social network with the most followers), most of my accounts have double-digit numbers of followers, or barely crack triple digits.
Image by Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay
