I had left the room by this point but I was told last night (hearsay) that during the Yellowbook keynote, at the Borrell show yesterday morning, that the following statement was made: Facebook is now the site’s top traffic referrer, passing Google.
This surprised me and I will seek to confirm it directly with Yellowbook. But if correct it’s striking on several levels. It argues that Facebook could become a major traffic source for local publishers (I believe this was via FB Connect).
I don’t know what the quality of leads coming from Facebook would be in this context — although I’m being told by publishers and others using Facebook Ads that the quality and efficacy is good — but the statement above suggests that publishers must more aggressively look to social media for traffic and leads for their advertisers.
Screenwerk 
February 9, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Greg,
That is very surprising. I knew Facebook connect would be a large part but I didn’t think that they could pass Google in terms of refers. What does this say about Yellowbook’s SEO, or does this just prove how the viralabilty of something can send massive amount of traffic? Is there any proof that this traffic is more qualified or more prone to click on ads?
February 9, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I wonder how much the growth in Yelp and Urbanspoon on Google played into this? Both tend to do very well on city and business-specific searches, which puts Yellowbook a bit further down the page.
February 9, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Interesting – I’d seen that Facebook is starting to outpace G in terms of referrers to some major properties incl. USA Today, Y!, CNN, etc. (see: http://bit.ly/info/cFWgj5 ) but had not heard yet data on YPs. Quality of the leads will be interesting and will come down to how FB can drive queries against a user’s social graph/index vs. random fanpage/rotational chum.
February 9, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Here’s a better link for the reference above: http://bit.ly/cFWgj5
February 9, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Isn’t G pushing out the directories in the SERP’s? Make sense that FB becomes the new traffic leader for the YP.
February 10, 2010 at 2:39 am
Seems odd to me. And I’d take 1 Google click to a dozen FB clicks any day. since I doubt users are performing directed searches on FB. The beauty of a Google user is that they are actively looking for a local product/service, not randomly clicking an ad while browsing social content.
February 10, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I’ve been thinking about this post since yesterday, when I first read it. I have an hypothesis to submit to the group as to why FB is now the top “traffic source” for Yellowbook. When you use Facebook Connect, you actually go to Facebook using their login overlay to get the user credentials and, once accepted, Facebook brings you back to the site using Facebook Connect.
I suspect we’re confusing “referrer” with “social media optimization”, i.e. Yellowbook is not getting new traffic from Facebook, they get a redirect because of Facebook Connect and it’s showing in their logs. Getting “new” traffic from Facebook is the holy grail but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.
February 10, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I have emailed Pad Marshall for clarification/comment and am waiting to hear from him.
February 10, 2010 at 7:59 pm
In thinking about Sebastien’s comment, is YB counting traffic twice? Once when the user enters yellowbook.com then again when they login to Facebook and the Facebook connect is counted too for the same user?
February 12, 2010 at 3:58 pm
They are not getting top traffic at least not according to Comscore. I think Sebastian is on target, they have a Facebook login for users who can automatically post their searches on YellowBook on Facebook. For registered users of Yellowbook, they are also running a campaign to get more registered users, so that could be the increase in traffic. In that case is it sustainable without motivating their user base with content and more contests?
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