For the second month in a row, daily deal sites Groupon.com adn LivingSocial saw significant declines in traffic, while Facebook.com, Twitter.com, MtV.com and unsurprisingly, NFL.com, all saw major traffic increases, acccording to Kantar Media Compete.
Compete ranks the 250 top websites monthly. This month’s results:
Daily Deal Leaders Drop in UVs for Second Consecutive Month
Perhaps in part due to market saturation and deal fatigue, the daily deal category’s definitive leader, Groupon.com, dropped 28.6 percent month-over-month (M-O-M) to 21.9M unique visitors (UVs). Despite its two-month downward trend, however, the site still shows impressive 164.9 percent year-over-year (Y-O-Y) growth. Livingsocial.com attracted 10.15M UVs in August, a 4.25 percent fall M-O-M, but a 96.02 percent rise Y-O-Y.
Facebook Gives Twitter a Boost
In August, Facebook.com and Twitter.com both scored all-time high numbers of UVs for the second straight month. Facebook hit 155.8M UVs (up 3.97 percent M-O-M, up 22.12 percent Y-O-Y), while Twitter rose 12.68 percent M-O-M to reach 36.5M UVs, a 27.57 percent improvement over last August.
“As both of these booming platforms wrestle with monetization and developing the optimal approach to incorporating advertising into social networking, marketers should watch the sites’ monthly metrics and referral traffic carefully to help determine if, where and/or how their brands should advertise in social,” said Michael Perlman, managing director, financial services and online media & search at Compete.
In August, Twitter.com received 26.6 percent of its traffic via Facebook.com — more than from Google and Yahoo combined! Of Twitter’s outbound referrals, 22.74 landed on Facebook. Conversely, only 0.37 percent of Facebook’s incoming traffic was referred from Twitter. A mere 1.22 percent of Facebook’s outgoing referrals were to Twitter.
MTV.com Celebrates VMA Anticipation and the Return of Jersey Shore
MTV.com was among the fastest-moving sites on Compete’s Top 250 list in August. Monthly UVs leapt to 12.8M, a 45.8 percent M-O-M increase and a 24.9 percent increase Y-O-Y. Factoring into this success were the season four Jersey Shore premiere on August 4 and the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28.
Traffic referrals from Facebook accounted for nearly 14 percent of MTV.com’s traffic in August. On the outbound end of things, almost 19 percent of MTV.com visitors made Facebook.com their next web destination.
NFL.com Benefits from Fantasy Football
NFL.com, home of the National Football League, shot up to 9.8M UVs in August, translating into a monthly spike of 114.36 percent and a Y-O-Y increase of 18.96 percent. Although the official season didn’t start until September, the site drew in scores of visitors with its fantasy offerings. NFL.com subdomain Fantasy.NFL.com jumped 309.82 percent for the month.
One to Watch: Patch.com
Patch.com, a “community-specific news and information platform,” hit number 208 on Compete’s Top 250 list in August, garnering 6.78M UVs — a 17.8 percent increase for the month and a 1193.1 percent leap from the site’s standing in August 2010.
