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By The Numbers: How Facebook Says Likes & Social Plugins Help Websites

Earlier this month, I wrote about how the promise of Facebook traffic has enticed millions of sites to use Facebook Like buttons and other Facebook social plugins. But does following Facebook’s socialist agenda really pay off? How about some numbers, courtesy of Facebook? Facebook provided me with the figures below from when I was working […]

Danny Sullivan on May 22, 2011 at 8:30 am

Earlier this month, I wrote about how the promise of Facebook traffic has enticed millions of sites to use Facebook Like buttons and other Facebook social plugins. But does following Facebook’s socialist agenda really pay off? How about some numbers, courtesy of Facebook?

Facebook provided me with the figures below from when I was working on my earlier article, Has Facebook Become The Master Key To Unlocking The Web?

Since the figures are from Facebook, you do have to take them with a grain of salt. However, there are plenty of third party sources that also report how making use of Facebook’s social features can be a traffic booster.

On with the stats!

Media Stats

Here’s what Facebook says about media sites using Like buttons and other social plugins:

The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.
People who sign in with Facebook at The Huffington Post view 22% more pages and spend 8 minutes longer than the average reader .
Users coming to the NHL.com from Facebook spend 85% more time, read 90% more articles and watch 85% more videos than a non-connected user.
ABCNews.com, Washington Post and The Huffington Post are said to have more than doubled their referral traffic from Facebook since adding social plugins.

Commerce Stats

About commerce sites and Facebook social plugins, the Facebook reports:

Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook after implementing the Like button in April 2010 and has maintained those levels since.
Outdoor sporting goods retailer Giantnerd.com saw a 100% increase revenue from Facebook within two weeks of adding the Like button.
American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on their site and found Facebook referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than non-Facebook referred visitors
Children’s clothing retailer Tea Collection added the Like button to sale merchandise and saw daily revenues increase 10 times.
ShoeDazzle added the Like button to all of the products on its site and within the first month had thousands of likes for its top products.
ShoeDazzle also lets people login to its site using Facebook, and Facebook-connected users were 50% more likely to make repeat purchases every month than average shoppers.
When a Ticketmaster user posts a specific event they are attending, or may want to attend, to Facebook, it generates $5.30 of direct ticket sales
Eventbrite reports that a link shared on Facebook is worth $2.52 in ticket sales (see also here and here)

Making “Like” More Likeable

Facebook says Like buttons get 3 to 5 times more clicks if:

Versions that show thumbnails of friends are used.
They allow people to add comments.
If they appear at both the top and bottom of articles.
If they appear near visual content like videos or graphics.

Metacafe Puts Like Up Top

For example, Facebook says that video site Metacafe placed a Like button above its videos, in addition to being below, as the arrows point to in this screenshot:

After doing this, use of the Like button and traffic from Facebook increased. Facebook reports that:

The number of daily likes more than tripled, going from an average of 2,000 likes per day to over 7,000 likes.
Daily referral traffic from Facebook to Metacafe doubled, going from about 60,00 to 120,000.
Total Facebook actions (likes, shares, comments) rose to 20,000 per day.

Metacafe has a bit more in slides it posted here.

More Tips From Buddy Media

Since Facebook was handing out Facebook optimization tips, I thought it was also worthwhile to point out a fairly recent white paper from Facebook marketing platform Buddy Media.

Called “Facebook’s EdgeRank: How to Make Sure You’re in the News Feed,” it’s a free download from here and suggests these tips, in summary:

Ask questions on your Facebook fan page (“Would?” gets the most engagement)
Post games and trivia
Interact with fans
Use wall “sapplets” — coupons, polls & other out-of-the-ordinary posts
Use relevant photos
Relate to current events
Incorporate videos
Post time-sensitive content
Post links
Be explicit in posts

The full report has lots of real life examples and accounts of how various changes drove traffic or engagement.

Coming up next, a close-up look at the day in the life of Search Engine Land on Facebook. All those Like buttons but only 22 clicks? And how there’s a wealth of data in Facebook’s own statistical tools, but they might not show you everything.

Why not tune in by becoming one of our fans on Facebook?

Postscript: Originally I’d written that Levi’s had a 40 times increase in traffic after adding Facebook Like buttons, which did seem pretty odd — 40 percent rise in its traffic overall? No. Facebook has clarified to me that Levi’s had a 40 times increase in traffic to the site from Facebook, not overall.

Also, before adding the buttons, Levi’s received less than 1% of its overall traffic from Facebook in March 2010. After adding the buttons, over 40% of its overall traffic came from Facebook in May 2010. Yes, I’ve double-checked that and Facebook reconfirmed, over 40% of its traffic from all sources came from Facebook.

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About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.