Facebook and Google:
The Great Divide

In a multiplatform world, consumers find content in a
multitude of ways — not only on your site, but also while
scrolling on Facebook or searching on Google. The different
ways a visitor can land on your content influences not only
what they read, but also how they read. Recent researchfrom Chartbeat shows that people exhibit different content
consumption behaviors when coming from platforms like
Facebook and Google than when already on your site.
Until now, the gaps in content consumption between
Facebook and Google audiences haven’t been fully exploredor researched. We’re hoping to change that by illuminatingthese differences using data from Chartbeat’s network of
50,000 media sites across the globe. We hope this uniqueperspective helps you understand the distinct role of eachplatform, so you can maximize your readership whereverit lives.

IN THIS RESEARCH
STUDY—Which platforms drive themost traffic?
—
How diverse is the content
read on social versus search,
and why?
—
How do people approachsocial and search during major
news events?
—
How does on-site engagement
correlate with Facebookshares?

Which platforms drive the most traffic?
About 75% of the global external traffic going to publisher sites ona daily basis, according to Chartbeat network-level data, is actually
coming from just five main platforms.

Together, Google andFacebook drive more than 70%of external traffic to publisher
sites.

THE 5 LARGEST REFERRERS TO MEDIA SITES40

PERCENT OF TRAFFIC

30

20100GooglesearchFacebookTwitterGoogleNewsYahooNews© Chartbeat 2016

Of the five referrers seen above — Google Search, Facebook, Twitter,Google News, and Yahoo! News — Google drives 40% of all external
global traffic to publisher sites, and Facebook drives about 30%.
With about 70% of traffic coming from these two platforms alone,it’s critical to understand what distinct roles they each play in themedia ecosystem and how they’re most successful as you define
your audience building strategy.

How diverse is the content read on social
versus search?
The diversity of content consumed is very different based on theplatform, and this is in large part due to the intended use of eachplatform; while readers use Google to actively search for content
around a specific subject, they find content more passively in their
Facebook news feed only after it’s been shared by a friend.

2 | Facebook and Google: The Great DivideThis means that the number of publisher pages getting referral
traffic from search engines at a given time is enormous, but
because social networks have what’s called a “rich-get-richer”
property where a story that’s highly shared is more likely to be seen
(and then shared) by others, social networks see concentrated
traffic on only a few pages.
To quantify this, we use what’s called a “diversity index” (in thiscase, Shannon entropy) to measure the diversity of traffic sentfrom a referrer. A low entropy corresponds to traffic that’s highly
concentrated on a few pages, while a high entropy corresponds totraffic that’s more distributed across a larger number of pages. As
we see in the chart below, Google traffic tends to have about 3 bits
more entropy than Facebook traffic, meaning it’s about 8x more
spread out across topics.

DIVERSITY OF MEDIA CONSUMPTION

GoogleFacebookTwitterSHANNON ENTROPY

14121098
11/02/15

11/09/15

11/16/15

11/23/15

11/30/15

12/07/1512/14/15

12/21/15

12/28/15© Chartbeat 2016

However, while a story is less likely on average to see traffic at allfrom Facebook than it is to see traffic from Google, the amount oftraffic you could see from Facebook in just a short period of time ismuch greater.
We also see a pattern where during major news events, such as theParis attacks in November 2015, entropy across all channels drops
and traffic is ultra-concentrated on a few major stories on a few
major sites (see downward spike on graph). But how does this relate
to actual engagement with these articles when finding them via
Google search versus your Facebook news feed?

3 | Facebook and Google: The Great Divide

What we search for is nearly
limitless, but because social
sharing is much more narrow,so is the diversity of what
content we find from social
channels.

When we dig in further to major news events, with multiple articles
and angles covering the same topic, we find that what publishers
write about and what audiences search for — and actually read — arecompletely different. As an example, we looked at the coverage andsubsequent consumption of different story lines leading up to andfollowing Brexit.

BREXIT: TOP STORIES COVERED AND CONSUMED

Coverage

SearchEngagement

SocialEngagement

Referrendum results come inLabor Party split after vote
Referrendum is underway
Scotland could veto Brexit
Ripples in global financial market
Aftermath of voting to Leave
Trump’s comments on Brexit
Instructions on how to vote
PM David Cameron resigns
Scotland considers 2nd independence vote
Labo Party’s leader refuses to resign
What happens if UK votes to leave
Labor Party’s leader is challenged
Vote watch and updates
John Oliver reacts to BrexitFarage breaks Brexit pledges
Regrets and anger about results
Economic consequences if Leave wins
Updates on vote counting
Trump’s Brexit press conference0© Chartbeat 2016

250 0

# OF ARTICLES

60,000 0

HOURS30,000HOURS

We see that the most successful stories on Facebook have anemotional lens, whereas the most successful stories on Google
tend to have a strictly informative lens. Only a few highly emotional
topics, like “Regrets and anger about results,” received significant
engagement via Facebook, and the more factual topics such as“What happens if UK votes to leave” received much more significant
engagement via Google search.

4 | Facebook and Google: The Great DivideConsumers engage with more
emotional stories on Facebook
and more informative storieson Google.

How do people approach search and social
during major events?
Where do readers turn during breaking news?

MINUTE-BY-MINUTE TRAFFIC DURING AND AFTER PARIS ATTACKS, 11/14/15
ISIS Attacks
1000
Facebook
Google800

600

4002000
Nov 13

Nov 14© Chartbeat 2016

While Facebook drives a high percentage of referral traffic, social
traffic tends to have a significant ramp up period, most likely dueto the fact that finding an article in your news feed is dependent on
someone in your network sharing it first. Evidently, people don’t liketo wait passively for news to come to them, but rather they preferto search proactively for the latest updates.
During breaking news events, our research shows that search peaks
first, followed by social. In fact, it isn’t until about 12 – 24 hours later
when social traffic picks up and reaches its peak via discussion andsharing. For example, as seen above during the Paris attacks in late2015, Google traffic to The Atlantic article “What ISIS Really Wants”
spiked 12 hours before Facebook traffic reached its peak. However,social channels may drive more traffic than search in the long run.

5 | Facebook and Google: The Great Divide

After a major news event
occurs, readers flock tosearch channels to find themost recent updates. It's not
until things have settled thatthey move to social channels
to share information anddiscuss what happened.

How does onsite engagement correlatewith Facebook shares?
Do more shares mean more engagement on the article? Not really.
High interactions or virality on social media don’t always translate
into actual reader engagement with stories.

GAP BETWEEN FACEBOOK SHARES AND ONSITE ENGAGEMENTNUMBER OF SHARES

100K

1K

1010K

1M

100M

TOTAL READING TIME (ENGAGED SECONDS)© Chartbeat 2016

To examine the relationship between social engagement andreadership, we looked at the 1,000 most shared stories forNovember – December 2016 and compared their share counts withthe total amount of time visitors spent reading them. If the mostengaging stories to read were the stories that were most likely to beshared, we’d expect this graph to look like a more conclusive line.
Instead, we see that social engagement and onsite engagement
are often different phenomena. For stories that earned more than
500,000 minutes of Total Engaged Time, the shares they attracted
range from just a handful to over 100,000. This tells us that social
media interaction and actual reader engagement are not as closelyaligned as many tend to think.
6 | Facebook and Google: The Great Divide

If the most engaging stories
to read were the stories thatwere most likely to be shared,
we’d expect this graph tolook like a more conclusive
line. Instead, we see thatsocial engagement andonsite engagement are often
different phenomena.

What can we learn from these differences?
The first step in leveraging these differences is purely
understanding them. Knowing which article and topic types havea better chance of being clicked on, read, and shared on Facebookvs. Google may give your audience development team a strong
starting place for leveraging the distinct role of each platform.
To summarize:
Together, Google and Facebook refer about 70% of external traffic
to publisher sites, according to our network-level data.
While your content is more likely to be found via Google search,
if it starts gaining traction from Facebook, there’s a greater
possibility that traffic will skyrocket. However, these are rareopportunities.
Readers tend to engage with more emotional topics when comingfrom social channels, and more informational topics when comingfrom search engines.
During major news events, Google traffic surges first. It isn’t until
things have settled that readers move to Facebook to share anddiscuss the event further.
Social shares and likes are not always direct indicators of actual
reader engagement with your content.
As you start to see similar and/or different consumption patterns
in your platform-related data, let us know. For a custom look at yourown social data, please email us at insights@chartbeat.com.
We are eager to continue the conversation.
Research by:Sonya Song, Data Scientist, Chartbeat
Josh Schwartz, Chief of Data Science, Chartbeat

Chartbeat, the content intelligence platform for publishers, believes that today’s content creators
and audience developers need mission-critical insights — in real time and across devices and social
platforms — to turn visitors into a loyal audience. With our mobile and social pivots, as well as Offsite
Social, our real-time social article performance tracker powered by Facebook’s Crowdtangle, we’rebuilding the tools to help you understand your content performance wherever your readers live.
7 | Facebook and Google: The Great DivideFor more about Chartbeat and how we’re helping you understandyour social audiences, get in touch at insights@chartbeat.com.

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