In January 2018, Facebook announced changes to its algorithm with an expressed intention (per their press release) to “prioritize posts that spark conversation and meaningful interaction between people.”
These changes, which made brand and publisher-owned Facebook pages less visible in consumers news feeds, have had a significantly adverse effect on publishers, according to data published by Parse.ly.
On average, publishers in Parse.ly’s network suffered a 28% overall decrease in traffic from Facebook during 2018 compared to the previous year.
Figures from Parse.ly are based on a network of publishers using its technology, and represent what 1 billion users read across 8 million articles each month. Before this, there has been other research highlighting the impact of Facebook’s changes to what ends up in the news feed.
In fact, the changes in algorithms for social media sites was cited as one of the most important issuesby 3 in 5 content marketers surveyed by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs last year.
Parse.ly found that one of the categories hardest hit by the algorithm changes was Arts & Entertainment, which saw a 71% decrease in referral traffic. Music, as a separate category, also experienced a big drop (-65%) in referral traffic in 2018. Read the rest at Marketing Charts.
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