Shareaholic has released its latest set of data concerning social referral traffic to publishers, and while Facebook’s share of site visits retreated a little after a surge in November, it remains the comfortable leader, ending 2013 far ahead of its competitors. During the latter third of the year, Facebook and Pinterest showed strong growth in referral traffic, but StumbleUpon had the biggest relative bump. In fact, by year’s end, StumbleUpon accounted for 0.86% of publishers’ traffic, compared to the combined total of 0.5% for Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.
A look back at 16 months’ worth of data reveals that StumbleUpon’s rise predominantly occurred in the latter stage of the year. After accounting for just 0.43% of publisher traffic in August, it picked up steam in September (0.56%) and October (0.7%) and again in December (0.86%). By contrast, the aggregate of the other 4 sites (Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+) lost considerable ground during a similar period, going from 1.06% share of publisher visits in July to 0.5% in December. That retreat was almost completely attributable to a drop-off in referral traffic from Reddit and YouTube, as LinkedIn and Google+ remain fractional players at best. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
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