Is a social visitor worth less than one from search?
Problem
- A shared post can bring a thousand visitors in a day, and the counter makes it look like a big win.
- Social visitors usually read less and come back less than visitors who searched for an answer, so the spike is worth less than it looks.
Solution
- Read pages per visit and returning visitors by source off your WebCounter report.
- Put them into the free calculator below and it shows what 1,000 visitors from each source earn over a year, return visits included.
Key points
- One search visitor is worth 1.5 social visitors over 12 months in the default example.
- 1,000 search visitors earn R194; 1,000 social visitors earn R129, at an estimated R90 per 1,000 page views.
- A social post needs about 1,510 visitors to match 1,000 from search.
- Return visits make up 17% of a search visitor's value but only 9% of a social one's.
- Pages per visit is the bigger lever - a social visitor who reads like a search visitor closes most of the gap.
In do mobile visitors earn your site less? we saw that two visits can look the same on the counter and earn very different amounts. Where the visitor came from matters just as much as the device. This post asks whether a visitor from social media is worth less than one from Google, once you count the visits they come back for.
Why the source changes what a visitor is worth
A visitor's value is the pages they read times what each page earns - on the first visit and on every visit after it.
- Social visitors are often passing through. They tap a link in a feed, read one page and go back to scrolling.
- Search visitors came looking for an answer, so they tend to read more, and some remember the site and come back.
- Return visits keep adding up for months - fewer each month, but they count.
- What a page view earns is the same either way, so the ratio between the two sources does not depend on your RPM.
Work out what each visitor is worth
Type pages per visit for social and for search, the share of each who come back the next month, the share of returners who keep coming back, what 1,000 page views earn you and how many months to count. The calculator shows what 1,000 new visitors from each source earn and charts it month by month.
Prefer a full page? Open the social vs search visitor value calculator on CalcSA. A newsletter reader beats both - the email list vs search traffic calculator shows by how much.
Worked example: the calculator's defaults
Social visitors read 1.3 pages and 4% of them come back the next month. Search visitors read 1.8 pages and 8% come back. Of those who come back, 60% come back again each month after. A page view earns an estimated R90 per 1,000. We follow 1,000 new visitors from each source for 12 months.
- 1,000 social visitors make 1,100 visits and earn R129.
- 1,000 search visitors make 1,200 visits and earn R194.
- One search visitor is worth 1.51 social visitors - R0.19 against R0.13 each.
- Return visits are 9.1% of a social visitor's value and 16.6% of a search visitor's.
- A social post needs about 1,510 visitors to be worth 1,000 from search.
Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown:
- Social visitors read 1.8 pages, like search ones: search is worth only 1.09 social visitors - most of the gap is gone.
- Social visitors also come back 8% of the time: the two are worth exactly the same.
- Nobody keeps coming back after one return: search is still worth 1.44 social visitors - pages per visit does most of the work.
Estimates. The pages per visit, the 4% and 8% return shares, the 60% who keep coming back and the R90 RPM are assumptions, as in the calculator. Your WebCounter report shows pages per visit and returning visitors by source.
A year of earnings from 1,000 new visitors
Same defaults. Earnings from 1,000 new visitors, added up month by month - from search, from social, and from social visitors who read 1.8 pages like search visitors:
- From search
- From social
- Social at 1.8 pages
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | From search | From social | Social at 1.8 pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | R162.00 | R117.00 | R162.00 |
| 1 | R174.96 | R121.68 | R168.48 |
| 3 | R187.40 | R126.17 | R174.70 |
| 6 | R192.89 | R128.15 | R177.44 |
| 12 | R194.33 | R128.67 | R178.16 |
- The first visit is most of the value - R162 of the R194 from search arrives on day one.
- Return visits widen the gap - from R45 on the first visit to R66 after a year.
- Getting social visitors to read half a page more beats chasing more of them - 1.3 to 1.8 pages is worth R49 per 1,000.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter shows where visitors came from, their pages per visit and how many come back. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Compare pages per visit for social and search referrers, for the same month.
- Returning visitors by source show who actually remembers the site.
- Look at a social spike a month later - if the returning count did not move, the spike was passing traffic.
- Count bots out - link previews and crawlers can inflate social referrals.
Sources
- The 1.3 and 1.8 pages per visit, the 4% and 8% return shares and the 60% who keep returning are our estimates - no single published benchmark was found that holds across niches.
- The R90 per 1,000 page views is an estimate; it does not change which visitor is worth more, only the rand amounts.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Social vs search visitor value.
Estimates only. What a visitor is worth depends on your niche, your pages and how the visitor found you; your own source report is the test.
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