Facebook is a major source of traffic for many sites, and Upworthy is among the ranks of publishers who do extremely well on the social network.
According to data from Quantcast, Upworthy’s traffic peaked at nearly 90 million unique visitors in November 2013.
One month later, Facebook announced a News Feed update that would display more relevant articles in the News Feed.
Since the update, traffic for Upworthy has declined 46 percent to 48 million unique visitors in January.
While 48 million is still nothing to laugh at, seeing your traffic cut in half in two months is definitely worrying.
Co-Founder Peter Koechley spoke with Business Insider, and he says the spike in November was due to “off the charts” posts.
As far as the double-digit decline over the past two months, here’s another explanation:
“Upworthy decided to publish fewer stories that are “just personally uplifting” and don’t deal with “income inequality, gender discrimination, or racial injustice.”
However, sites such as Elite Daily and Distractify saw similar declines around the same time frame.
Chances are, there are many different factors in place, but Facebook has shown that it’s serious about delivering a better News Feed experience.
Remember images with quotes? Once dominating the stream, they’ve quieted down significantly.
All publishers, not just Upworthy, have to learn how to adapt from any changes Facebook makes, and hope that they’re not met with obscurity.
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