MARLBOROUGH, 10/6/2009 - Nothing makes website owners happier than loyal, repeat users, but it can often be difficult to find them.  Now, a study by online ad network Chitika suggests that the two best sources may be Facebook and Digg.

The study, based on a sample of 33 million unique users across the Chitika publisher network in September, 2009, compared the number of visitors coming from major traffic sources - Digg, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Twitter - to the number of times those visitors came back to the referred site.  If a visitor came to the site four or more times over the course of a week, that visitor was considered a "loyal" user.

The results showed that Facebook was far and away the best provider of loyal users - over 20% of all visitors from Facebook visited the referred site four or more times per week.  Digg came in second place with slightly over 16%

Next came the search engines, Yahoo! leading the way with over 15% of referrals being loyal.  Google and Bing were practically even at slightly below 12%, and Twitter came in last place overall with barely over 11%.

While Google naturally wins in sheer numbers, if a website owner can drive a thousand people to their site via Google, or they can drive the same number via Facebook, Facebook seems to be the way to go for creating a loyal reader.

The Raw Numbers

About Chitika
Chitika, Inc., is a search-based online advertising network , leading the way in intent-based advertising and search engine insights. With over 60,000 sites and 2 billion monthly impressions, the Chitika network is the pulse of the online world. For more information, visit http://chitika.com

Contact:
Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com
Follow us on Twitter