Is it possible? Could Google’s ubiquitous search tool be in danger of loosing it’s spot as the top referrer for all things on the web?
I know it sounds totally crazy, but take a look at this post by NewTeeVee and this one by Peter Yared both of which highlight how Facebook (NOT GOOGLE) has become the top source of traffic for Perez Hilton’s web site.
Clearly it’s early days, and the Perez Hilton example may be an anomaly due to the fact that it’s a gossip site — but the simple fact is that a massive shift in web traffic patterns is beginning to occur.
The driving force behind this dynamic is simple. More people are spending more time inside of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. These people share tons of content with each other. To be specific, Facebook users share 28 million pieces of content (including links, blog posts and photos) per month. It’s this sharing of content between people that drives tons of traffic. In some cases, this dynamic drives more traffic than even Google because people are more likely to click on a link recommended by a human friend vs. a search robot.
Traffic From Social Networks Is On The Rise
The trend is early, but real. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here. While nothing is binary, I firmly believe that future generations of online marketers will spend more time creating content that inserts their brand into social interactions between people — and less time creating content that inserts their brand into traditional search results.
I pesonally can’t see the likes of social networking sites taking over from google or other search engines (there needs to be a big direct competitor to google at some point), although I have seen a few good examples of the likes of Twitter being used successfully to promote websites, it is especially useful when launching new websites.
Like you say though, I can see brands using social networking to try and get users to “reccommend” to friends their products in some shape or form!