????在大型新聞網站或出版社工作的人都知道，社交媒體導流，也就是在Facebook和推特等社交網絡上分享給別人的鏈接，已經成為網絡流量的關鍵來源；同時，一段時間以來，轉發和搜索一直在爭奪新讀者首要來源的寶座。現在，流量分析機構Parse.ly公布的新數據顯示，Facebook已經不再只是和谷歌纏斗了，它把谷歌遠遠地甩在了身后。

????Parse.ly首席技術官安德魯·蒙塔倫蒂接受《財富》雜志采訪時表示，該公司的最新估算結果表明，社交媒體（業界一哥Facebook的規模遠遠超過其他同行）約占Parse.ly覆蓋的媒體網站流量的43%，谷歌的份額則為38%。

????Parse.ly的客戶包括400多家大型新聞和媒體機構，其中既有《連線》雜志、《大西洋月刊》、路透社和《每日電訊報》等傳統新聞機構，也有一大批純數字媒體，如Mashable、The Next Web和Business Insider?？偟膩碚f，它們的每月頁面瀏覽量約為60億次，獨立訪問者超過10億人。

????蒙塔倫蒂說，這并不是Facebook首次在導流方面擊敗谷歌。去年10月份Facebook就曾小勝一場，本月的領先優勢則大得多。同時，通過Parse.ly的數據可以清楚地看到，搜索網站似乎進入了瓶頸期，作為媒體導流的來源，它們實際上并未實現增長。此外，Facebook的影響力“表明它一直呈上升態勢”。

????Facebook的增長勢頭一直都相當強勁。Parse.ly的數據表明，就在去年1月，在Parse.ly覆蓋的媒體網站的流量貢獻中，Facebook還只占Parse.ly所記錄來源的20%；現在，它的份額已經翻了一番多。但蒙塔倫蒂指出，這并不意味著Facebook貢獻了所有流量的43%，而是說在Parse.ly可以獲得數據的流量來源中，Facebook占43%。

????另一流量分析機構Chartbeat首席執行官托尼·黑爾表示，該公司數據反映出了類似的局面。盡管通過谷歌搜索來導流的網站在種類上遠遠超過Facebook，但大型新聞和媒體網站對Facebook的依賴程度明顯高于谷歌。他說：“在我們覆蓋的所有網站中，其中三分之一，Facebook比谷歌的導流效果好；但在排名前五分之一的網站中，Facebook貢獻流量較多的約占一半。”

????毫無疑問，社交分享已經憑借自身的天然優勢成為遠比其他渠道重要的流量來源。不過，Parse.ly CTO蒙塔倫蒂認為，谷歌在導流方面的調整可能也是影響因素之一。此前谷歌會告訴新聞媒體機構，哪些關鍵字給它們的報道帶來了最多的流量；但現在，谷歌在大多數情況下已經不再提供此類數據。谷歌的說法是這樣做出于安全考慮。在蒙塔倫蒂看來，此舉也可能是因為谷歌不希望這些機構在自己的算法上做文章。

????不論原因如何，無法獲知谷歌帶來了哪些流量，同時也不知道它為什么這樣做也許讓人們對搜索引擎優化越發不感興趣，并讓他們更專注于使用Facebook和推特等社交平臺。蒙塔倫蒂指出，Facebook今年早些時候披露了Instant Articles項目，通過這樣一些做法，它一直在向媒體獻殷勤，讓后者把更多的內容放在自己的網站上。。

????蒙塔倫蒂認為，上述變化的唯一問題在于，當人們想知道為什么這篇文章很受歡迎而那篇文章反響平淡時，Facebook就會變得幾乎像谷歌那樣高深莫測。這種情況下，媒體就很難制定出連貫的社交媒體策略。

????他說：“媒體方面在推特等社交渠道上下了很大力氣，但我們的數據表明，推特基本上是個邊緣型流量來源。這很可惜。在算法怎樣發揮作用等問題上，Facebook的透明度要低得多。推特在內容方面提供的有用信息比Facebook多很多，而Facebook更像一個暗箱，無法得知其運作方式。不過，它是個巨大的流量來源，而且還在不斷增長?！保ㄘ敻恢形木W）

????譯者：Charlie

????校對：詹妮

????Anyone who works for a major news website or publisher knows that social referrals—that is, links that are shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter—have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time. Now, according to new numbers from the traffic-analytics service Parse.ly, Facebook is no longer just vying with Google but has overtaken it by a significant amount.

????Parse.ly’s chief technical officer Andrew Montalenti said in an interview with Fortune that the company’s latest estimates show that social-media sources (of which Facebook FB 1.32% is by far the largest) accounted for about 43% of the traffic to the Parse.ly network of media sites, while Google accounted for just 38%.

????The company’s clients include more than 400 major news and media outlets, including traditional publishers such as Wired, The Atlantic, Reuters and The Daily Telegraph, as well as a large group of digital-only outlets such as Mashable, The Next Web and Business Insider. Collectively, the network accounts for about 6 billion pageviews and more than one billion unique visitors per month.

????This isn’t the first time that Facebook has edged past Google in the traffic-referral race, Montalenti said. The social network took the top spot by a small amount last October, but this month’s lead is far more dramatic — and the Parse.ly CTO said that from the company’s data, it’s clear that search has hit a kind of plateau and isn’t really growing any more as a referral source for media. Meanwhile, Facebook’s influence has “shown it’s on a continued growth trajectory.”

????That trajectory has been fairly dramatic: According to Parse.ly, as recently as January of last year, Facebook accounted for just 20% of all the traffic from documented sources to the company’s network of media sites, and now it is more than double that. Montalenti said this doesn’t mean Facebook accounts for 43% of all traffic, but just the sources that Parse.ly is able to get data on.

????Tony Haile, CEO of the traffic-analytics firm Chartbeat, said that his company’s data shows a similar theme: although Google has a much broader range of sites it sends traffic to via search, the larger news and media sites have become much more reliant on Facebook. “When we look at all the sites over our network, a third have more Facebook traffic than Google,” he said. “But when we only look at the largest 20%, about half of them have more traffic from Facebook than Google.”

????Although there’s no question that social sharing has become a much more important source of traffic in its own right, the Parse.ly CTO said that a change in Google’s referral practices may also have played a role. While the search company used to show publishers what keywords were used to direct the most traffic to their articles, in most cases it doesn’t provide that kind of data any more. The company says this is for security reasons, but Montalenti says it could also be because Google doesn’t want publishers to game its algorithm.

????Whatever the reasoning, that lack of insight into what kind of traffic is coming from Google and why could have helped contribute to a lack of interest in SEO and growing interest in using social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter TWTR -2.62% . Facebook has also been trying to court media companies and get them to host more of their content on the site, Montalenti noted, through efforts such as the Instant Articles project it announced earlier this year.

????The only problem with that shift, the Parse.ly CTO says, is that Facebook is almost as impenetrable as Google when it comes to trying to figure out why one article did well and another didn’t. And that makes it difficult for publishers to build a coherent social-media strategy.

????“There’s a lot of effort among media companies being placed on specific social channels like Twitter, but our data shows that Twitter is basically a distant traffic source,” says Montalenti. “That’s unfortunate because Facebook is a lot less transparent around things like how the algorithm functions. There’s a lot more useful data from Twitter about their content, but FB is more like a black box in terms of how it operates. And yet it’s this huge and growing traffic source.”