Outbrain reports that two-thirds of site traffic is still from either directly coming to the site, or jumping from another page on the site. Only 33 percent of traffic comes from outside sources, of which only 11 percent comes from social media… though that number is on rise.

Their analysis comes from 100 million site visits to over 100 premium publishers during the first quarter of this year. Search engine traffic, which are nearly four times the size of social media traffic, also have larger numbers of page-views per session and longer sessions overall.

The researchers theorize that people who visit on their own are more likely to stay for an extended period of time, rather than if they’re urged by someone they know. “Traffic coming from social media sources, on the other hand, has the highest tendency to bounce,” writes Kelly Reeves, Outbrain s senior marketing manager.

Results also varied by content genre; Outbrain discovered that 42 percent of traffic referrals for news sites arrives via social media while less than 5 percent of sports sites traffic. Facebook sessions were also found to be better for referrals.

We found about 72 percent of sessions originating from Facebook were from a unique visitor, versus only 52 percent in the case of Twitter, suggesting that Twitter’s audience is more likely to be made up of repeat visitors, writes Reeves.

Source: AdWeek {link no longer active}