Written on April 29th, 2008 at 08:04 pm by Darren Rowse
What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog?
It’s time for another ProBlogger Poll.
What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog?
Is it search engines? If so which one? Is it RSS subscribers and loyal readers? Is it Social Media sites (and which one is it)? Do other blogs and sites send most? Or is it some other source of traffic?
If you want to base your answer on a period of time - do it for April (so far).
What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog?
I’m looking forward to seeing the results of this one. Feel free to expand on your response further in the comments on this post.
101 Responses to “What is the Biggest Source of Traffic to Your Blog?”
infot
April 29th, 2008 8:38 pm
Stumble, Digg, Entrecard.
Eli
April 29th, 2008 8:40 pm
For my main site I’m gonna say Google. It’s nice getting free traffic! :)
Archit
April 29th, 2008 8:42 pm
Voted! :)
Cheers!
Ashley Smith
April 29th, 2008 8:48 pm
Just to elaborate on my vote, stumbleapon gives me most of my traffic on a daily basis.
John
April 29th, 2008 8:49 pm
Well technically most of my traffic comes from search engines, but I’ve had one article that made it big on stumbleupon and digg that brings in a steady stream of traffic that is still higher than anything else - So I guess social media sites are my highest refer, but my biggest source of organic traffic is Google, followed closely by referrals from forums and blogs.
Miss Elle
April 29th, 2008 8:51 pm
Google.
That’s what I get for putting a picture of Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain in one of my posts. :(
Santosh Puthran
April 29th, 2008 8:55 pm
Primary source of traffic on my blog is google. However I have noticed that traffic from Entrecard and Blog Catalog have increased on my blog.
DOTMEDOMAINS
April 29th, 2008 8:59 pm
1. google
2. yahoo
3. images.google.com
Mike Robinson
April 29th, 2008 9:04 pm
It seems to be RSS readers and Google for me. I’m a little disappointed that “jaiku invite” gets me more search traffic than my actual name, I guess it’s something for me to work on!
Arun
April 29th, 2008 9:05 pm
My biggest source of traffic to my blog http://www.simplewayoflife.net is obviously Google. I am trying hard to get more refferal visitors to my website as search engine traffic is not a reliable on in the long term. Can anyone any ideas on getting more refferal traffic to a website?
Julian Simpson
April 29th, 2008 9:16 pm
The bulk of my traffic comes from organic google searches. Even the bulk of my referring traffic is from Google Reader. A tiny proportion of referrals is links from other sites. I’m working on that!
Rhea
April 29th, 2008 9:16 pm
It’s image searches via Google. I get tons of that.
Ben
April 29th, 2008 9:20 pm
75% of my traffic is from search engines with Google being about 90%.
I have worked on increasing the traffic from the other 25% because I would like to have a balance of 50/50 from search engines and other sources.
Of course, blogging is a long-term project, so it may take some time to arrive at that 50/50 split.
Jeffrey
April 29th, 2008 9:27 pm
about 60% of my traffic comes from Google, and the remaining 40% is split between stumbleupon and repeat traffic. SU did/does more for my traffic than any other social networking…plus i’m addicted to it. ha.
Katy
April 29th, 2008 9:29 pm
I’ve gone with Google although the main referrer is actually Google images - some of the wallpapers I’ve created seem to rank pretty highly for certain keywords.
The second place referrer is a site that featured a link to an article I wrote about 3 years ago. I hardly get any referrers from my RSS feed but I think that’s because I offer a full feed so no one feels the need to click through.
Trula
April 29th, 2008 9:32 pm
google all the way, that’s bulk of it
Patty Gale
April 29th, 2008 9:33 pm
For a new site, it’s fairly close between other referring sites and repeat subscribers.
As the site becomes more established, I start to see more organic traffic.
Carl-Johan Hunefalk
April 29th, 2008 9:37 pm
1. StumbleUpon
2. Google
3. Yahoo
Then plenty of other social sites. Funny, the trend has moved from Google to SU over the past month…
Expert Witness Marketer
April 29th, 2008 9:49 pm
If you ever run this poll again, you might consider two other categories. Most traffic comes to my blog from my email newsletter and direct (postal) mail, followed closely by Google.
VitaminCM
April 29th, 2008 9:52 pm
I get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and then Google.
Michael
April 29th, 2008 9:54 pm
Google at 68%
Direct traffic at 10%
Yahoo at 9%
etc. at 13%
Fiar
April 29th, 2008 9:56 pm
Google makes up 40% of my traffic. Stumbleupon adds another 12%. Direct visits are another 9%. Humor-Blogs.com rounds out the top referrals with 7%.
I think it shows the power of doing a little good SEO. So many seem to think that’s a bad word these days.
Becky C
April 29th, 2008 10:03 pm
Twitter brings in the most.
Karen Putz / DeafMom
April 29th, 2008 10:03 pm
Almost 50% comes from search engines with the majority being Google. 40% comes from referring sites. The rest is direct traffic.
Roshan Bhattarai
April 29th, 2008 10:05 pm
It’s google, stumbleupon and dzone.com for me
@balootisme.com
April 29th, 2008 10:12 pm
darren,
most of my traffic comes from STUMBLEUPON and DIGG…
this is because my blog are new, and didn’t receive any pagerank yet… ;)
Nitin Pulyani
April 29th, 2008 10:17 pm
Google sends me the maximum traffic.
Cookiemouse
April 29th, 2008 10:20 pm
50% referrals from other sites.
44% search engines (of which 42.5% comes from Google!)
Yahoo is 0.86% of my search traffic, less than referrals from Flickr.
Infected By Bugs
April 29th, 2008 10:20 pm
Why was I the first one to vote yet the 10th commenter? But yah, Google For Me!
Andy
April 29th, 2008 10:21 pm
At the moment, social media makes up the bulk (70%+) of my traffic to my main site.
Used to be Google, but I got hacked last month (part of the mass hack that Technorati were warning about) and Google traffic has gone from 3-400 uniques per day to about 30.
Looking on the bright side, it’s forced me to really pay attention to how I can develop other traffic sources so that, when Google gets round to reconsidering my site and the Google Juice comes back, I should be in a much stronger long-term position.
Todd
April 29th, 2008 10:29 pm
95% of my traffic is from google searches. It drives me nuts that I can’t hold on to readers to come back for more. My site is all about Home Improvement so I tend to find people searching for specific information about DIY tips and how to’s for common home improvement projects. I just wish I could get them to return more often. My traffic has grown steadily each month but all from searches. I wish there was an easy way to keep even 10% of those readers coming back for more.
Rod
April 29th, 2008 10:36 pm
Definitely Google. I know you’ve highlighted the dangers of over-reliance on search engines in the past, and am working to change this, but for now, Google’s my friend.
Gman
April 29th, 2008 10:51 pm
Google gets over 75% of my traffic, Yahoo gets under 0.1% :D
Julie
April 29th, 2008 10:54 pm
About 43% of my traffic comes from referring sites such as fishing forums, fishing site directories, blogcatalog, etc…
38% is from search engines… with probably 99% from google since I just got indexed in msn and yahoo…
The last 20% is direct traffic…
Haven’t had much luck with StumbleUpon or Digg.
Evelyn Lim
April 29th, 2008 10:56 pm
Source of traffic appears to be from Stumble Upon now. Maybe it’s the case for my site because I’m focusing less on SEO.
fortunecookienotes
April 29th, 2008 10:57 pm
Surprisingly, it’s the wikipedia article involving on my niche (not my actual blog). Stumbleupon and Google are a close second.
Keith
April 29th, 2008 10:57 pm
Google.
According to, erm, Google.
Hjörtur Smárason
April 29th, 2008 11:10 pm
Google has been big lately (I wrote a post about the marketing scheme behind Lindsay Lohans Sex Tape Scandal with Callum Best - and these seem to be pretty popular keywords these days), but sometimes traffic from social media sites peaks with thousands of hits outnumbering Google by far.
Up2DateRates
April 29th, 2008 11:15 pm
Most of my traffic comes from word of mouth. My goal is to spread my sites name within the Real Estate industry by contacting both Realtors and Loan Officers.
Income Academy
April 29th, 2008 11:16 pm
Interesting Poll, I do get some from Google but but the majority is made up of referrals, subscribers and visitors from distributed articles.
Mark
April 29th, 2008 11:29 pm
YouTube (!) by far (about one-third of the traffic). Search engines account for only about 15% of the traffic (according to Google Analytics and Feedburner).
Eric Atkins
April 29th, 2008 11:37 pm
#1: Google
#2: ??? It sends more traffic than DIGG.
Veronica
April 29th, 2008 11:48 pm
Currently most of my traffic is from subscribers, however, I recently uploaded an All in One SEO plugin that seems to have lifted the amount of search engine traffic I am getting.
Roland Hesz
April 29th, 2008 11:53 pm
Directaccess 40.68%
twitter.com (referral) 25.42%
google (organic) 8.47%
Although, I think it will change when the number of visitors will surpass 120 a month :)
Then I expect it will be weighted more heavily toward search engines.
Fernando
April 30th, 2008 12:14 am
Google for actual pageviews (about 70% of traffic comes from search, 96% of which is Google), and about the same amount through my feed (Feedburner).
Angsuman Chakraborty
April 30th, 2008 12:24 am
Google by a small margin
tmosley
April 30th, 2008 12:27 am
80 percent Google, 10 percent rss feeds, 5 percent yahoo, 5 various other sites.
Andrea
April 30th, 2008 12:28 am
Since my topic is so specialized, my top referalls are the wordpressmu forums where I help out, google, the MU section of the WordPress Codex and then Stumbleupon .
Ulla
April 30th, 2008 12:29 am
images.google.com, second place: other blogs
D.A.T.
April 30th, 2008 12:30 am
I recently gave away a free vector pack on my blog and I put a link to them up at freevectors.net. Ive got the most traffic from them so far. My blog is new though. Google has been steadly increasing as well.
sarah
April 30th, 2008 12:47 am
actually most of my hits come specifically for my post about best NYC brunch spots!
Erica
April 30th, 2008 12:53 am
Stumble, Direct, and then Google.
Tom At The Home Business Archive
April 30th, 2008 1:03 am
My biggest sources of traffic are Google, Direct,Squidoo, forums and several smaller sources.
Bash Bosh
April 30th, 2008 1:04 am
Mostly on my blog traffic comes from:
1. Search Engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live) 75.5%
2. Other Sites and Blogs 15.5%
Louis Liem
April 30th, 2008 1:05 am
SU, Google, Entrecard.
Is there any information could be extracted from these data? To improve our sites?
TourPro
April 30th, 2008 1:14 am
Google, but to be more specific, Image Search.
Simple optimization of images - alt, title, height, width, etc - is a simple way of getting fairly relevant traffic.
James B.
April 30th, 2008 1:16 am
Google, Yahoo, Entrecard, and then other
Planet Berry
April 30th, 2008 1:26 am
We utilize both a Blog approach (blogger.com) and our web site content based keyword association to our themes to draw visitors. Its a Turtles Approach but it builds hardened loyalty on return visits. Took about 9 months to get to this level but now with the PR4 ranking we are getting hits from all corners of the round globe!
Google is by far our greates friend in the search engine wars.
Genesis
April 30th, 2008 2:07 am
I have a lot of very loyal readers. This was discovered after I kind of disappeared for a month (6 posts in a whole month!) due to assorted issues. When I came back, I expected to have to start again from scratch, but all my readers were still there!
David
April 30th, 2008 2:13 am
Google is by far my Number one referer. My objective now is to retain as much of this traffic as possible.
Syed Balkhi
April 30th, 2008 2:14 am
I would have to say the readers for the most part / direct visits … then search engines and then referring sites.
Lord Matt
April 30th, 2008 2:16 am
I want to be able to say that it’s hard to tell because I get a good spread of traffic from many sources but basically Stumble Upon and Google send 99%.
Virtual Bird's Eye
April 30th, 2008 2:32 am
Depends on the day - I am a new site and if I get a link from a site, that draws more traffic - otherwise, it’s Google
Becky
April 30th, 2008 2:41 am
Google sends me 80% of my traffic the rest is mainly stumbleupon and other social networking sites.
Lin Burress
April 30th, 2008 2:43 am
After my little “rant” appeared on the New York Times about Miley Cyrus’ photo fiasco, and several other news sites/media picked up the story with links to my blog, I’d have to say April has been mainly from other Websites. It’s been interesting to say the least.
Talking Books Librarian
April 30th, 2008 2:47 am
Wow, I am surprised to see Google as #1 traffic source right now. However, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, as this is what I voted for as well!
Jim Goldstein
April 30th, 2008 3:21 am
Google, but to be specific I get a lot of traffic from Google Image.
Here are my Top 3
1. Google
2. Direct
3. Google Images
After this I have a few specific web sites that link to my site and followed by other search engines.
Derek
April 30th, 2008 3:49 am
Google is my largest source of traffic, with the Images search coming in 2nd and StumbleUpon third. It is amazing to see how many image searches there are, although including a clothed image of a porn star in a post can do that I guess.
Michael Kwan
April 30th, 2008 3:56 am
Probably the most consistent source of traffic for my blog has to be Google — most of my blog posts seem to index reasonably well — but I’ll get huge spikes from StumbleUpon from time to time. These stumbles can account for as much as 10x my regular daily visitor count.
Jon Bishop
April 30th, 2008 4:17 am
1) google
2) dzone.com
3) direct
Google is 40% of my traffic. Almost 50% is social networks (i get a lot of traffic from dzone.com for my flash source code). Plaxo, Twitter and BlogCatelog make up most of the rest of the social networkings traffic.
Jeff - buzzmyblog.com
April 30th, 2008 4:20 am
Stumble, EntreCard and Direct traffic. My percentage of direct traffic is very high, which shows I have a lot of regular readers. I am happy about that, but need to find a way to attract new readers!
The Salem Insider
April 30th, 2008 4:27 am
I got a huge spike from Stumble but if you remove that 45% of my hits are from other site referrals.
65 Ways To Get Traffic
April 30th, 2008 4:46 am
My goal is to have most of my people be repeat visitors but for now most come from google and forums.
Carl
April 30th, 2008 6:49 am
SU
Taylor
April 30th, 2008 7:05 am
StumbleUpon sends the most traffic, in total, because it sends people for a long long time. Twitter gives good spikes, though.
I get practically nothing from Google. Time for research on SEO.
Nesa
April 30th, 2008 7:22 am
Being ranked high in google, some yahoo, but not much from them.
Darren Rowse
April 30th, 2008 7:56 am
finding it interesting that Google so far outweighs the ‘other Search Engine’ category!
skykid
April 30th, 2008 8:07 am
Google and other Search Engines - some of which I never know they existed
Boris @ Word Plop Tech Blog
April 30th, 2008 8:21 am
About 95% of my traffic is from google searches, then there is the occasional burst of digg traffic, recently been picking up a lot of Yahoo searches, and the rest is from unknown sources.
MeMyKidandLife
April 30th, 2008 9:15 am
1. Google’s Search Engine
2. Google Images
:-)
elle
April 30th, 2008 9:29 am
This is good to see.. we have a few sites that get really.. REALLY different traffic flows.
Our main site consists mainly of repeat visitors… about 60%. The rest comes from google, yahoo, etc. 1% other… not even sure what “other” means.
The “niche” sites get most of their traffic via keywords from google.. organic searches and such.
It is really cool to see how many people get a lot of traffic from stumble.. very good to note!
Michelle
April 30th, 2008 10:35 am
my weird comments on other people’s sites…. also the goog.
Alisha
April 30th, 2008 11:28 am
For me, Google brings me the majority of traffic. I’ve only recently started getting some from StumbleUpon.
Dr. Nicole Sundene
April 30th, 2008 12:24 pm
Google….Yahoo….Stumble…Blogcatalog
Lulu
April 30th, 2008 1:45 pm
#1 Google (45%)
#2 Referrals (30%)
Neil Creek
April 30th, 2008 3:03 pm
Perhaps not surprisingly, as a regular contributor to DPS, the biggest source of traffic to my blog (at 17% over the last 12 months, 33% in the last month) is the Digital Photography School. This really shows the power of guest posting. Beyond that it’s a great variety, with StumbleUpon coming in second, direct referrals third and Google fourth. I like to keep my traffic sources diverse! :)
Luis Cruz
April 30th, 2008 7:00 pm
According to my Analytics:
10.40% Direct Traffic
84.51% Referring Sites
5.09% Search Engines
Digging deeper, it looks like other photography blogs & SU send a lot of visitors my way.
Kyle Wegner
April 30th, 2008 11:15 pm
As the blog I run is fairly new, the majority of our hits have come from amazingly timed and super useful comments on some very popular blogs. These, coupled with a few topics we have ranked well on for some search terms in Google, have helped our blog grow significantly in the 2 months we have been published.
Shamess
April 30th, 2008 11:19 pm
Unfortunately, Google. I say that because those people don’t tend to stay too long. They come to my site, stay on that page for a few minutes (indicating that they’re just here to find a fix for their system) and then go. I get around two page views per visitor from Google, and they don’t usually come back.
That being said, I do get around 200 visitors a month from Google, which is around 70% of my visitors, so I guess they help. (260 uniques a month may be tiny for most of you guys, but it’s a lot for me. xP)
I suppose what I really need to do is find a way to make those visitors stick… Though, I’m not sure how. They obviously find my site helpful, otherwise they’d bounce out after a few seconds rather than minutes like they do…
Raag Vamdatt
May 1st, 2008 1:01 am
My website is around 6 months old. I would love to have repeat visitors, and people subscribing to RSS, as that would mean people like my content and want to come back for more.
But a large portion of my current traffic is from Google. Maybe that’s coz mine is a niche site (personal finance), or maybe its coz the site is fairly new…
In a way, this is good as it means newer people are getting exposure to my website, but again, I am always wondering if they would come back….
marcus
May 1st, 2008 8:41 am
Google.
LintCollector
May 1st, 2008 11:17 pm
Most of my visitors come to my static-page website (of which my blog is a part) from one of the more than 2000 other websites which link to various static pages on mine. Once on my website, some stay around long enough to find the blog.
Kevin
May 1st, 2008 11:58 pm
Besides Google, the second biggest traffic source is forums. I post a decent amount on forums and people either click on links in my posts or forum signature. My site is fairly new (6 months or so) but RSS subscribers have seen a decent increase in the last month or so.
Greg @ Mommy Daddy Blog
May 2nd, 2008 6:39 am
Google, hands down!
David
May 2nd, 2008 6:54 am
I’m new to the blog world. For now I would say free ad sites like craigslist. Doesn’t hurt to try!
Rob Brydon
May 2nd, 2008 7:04 am
“snake on a pole”
Who would have guessed?
Nathan Bowers
May 2nd, 2008 11:49 am
Most of my ongoing trickle comes from Google organic, especially image search.
Most of my spikes come from the new Ycombinator news site, though one came from a high profile Tumblogger.
I did an in depth post about my traffic analysis comparing Feedburner, GA, and WordPress analytics that you can see if you click my name.
Russell Coker
May 2nd, 2008 4:11 pm
It seems strange to me that a “Planet” syndication is not listed as an option. My three biggest groups of readers are from three Planets that syndicate my blog.
Pete Moring
May 2nd, 2008 10:44 pm
Initially the most traffic comes from my newsletter sign-ups. But after that, Twitterin’ seems to do the trick.
Pete.
Michelle Barsi
May 3rd, 2008 12:03 am
Google, Stumbleupon and Dzone ;)
Chimbles
June 12th, 2008 4:14 pm
So far for my blog http://www.chimbles.com it’s Direct @ 24%, DIGG @ 24%, Google @16.5%, Google-Images @12%… unfortunately Yahoo is not a significant player at all… I dismiss it because of the popularity of Google, but deep down I think there should be a bit more from Yahoo.
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