Search referral traffic to small publishers dropped 60% over two years, according to Chartbeat data reported exclusively by Axios.
That’s nearly three times the decline at large publishers. The analytics firm, which tracks traffic across thousands of client websites globally, segmented its network by size. Mid-sized publishers (10,000 to 100,000 daily page views) lost 47%, and large publishers (over 100,000 daily page views) lost 22%.
What’s New
Aggregate search traffic data from Chartbeat isn’t new. Our January Reuters Institute coverage cited Chartbeat data showing a 33% global decline in Google Search referrals. What’s new is the size breakdown. Previous Chartbeat figures cited in earlier coverage were aggregate numbers, and this data shows the losses are…