Some news publishers see resurgence of Facebook referral traffic, but aren’t sure what to make of it

Facebook referral traffic quadrupled in March 2025 compared to March 2024, according to Josh Awtry, svp of audience development at Newsweek. He declined to share raw monthly visitor figures. (Newsweek’s referrals from all social platforms are up almost 10 times compared to the average day in March last year, Awtry noted.)

Political news site The Hill had 48 million visits in February, with month-over-month growth up 17%, making it the fastest growing English-language news site for visits, according to the Press Gazette. A big part of that is attributable to a surge in social referral traffic in February and March, said Sarakshi Rai, The Hill’s director of audience development. Facebook referrals in particular have tripled since last year for the publisher, she noted.

“That has really changed for us,” Rai said. “Social coming back up for us is huge.” (She’s not alone in saying that social referral traffic is having a moment.) Facebook is now starting to “tick up again” to make up about 50% of The Hill’s social referral traffic, she added.

“There’s been a surge in stories being picked up on Facebook again,” Rai told Digiday.

News publisher Salon has seen a 148% increase in page views in the last three months compared to the three months prior, according to Salon’s general manager Amanda Wolfe. “We’re seeing a large corresponding increase in impressions and engagement on Facebook itself,” she said.

Facebook revenue and referral traffic are up about 30% from their lowest point last November, one publishing exec said during a closed-door town hall session during the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado, in March.

But none of the execs interviewed for this story are hanging their hats on the return of Facebook referrals.

Publishers have a history of being burned by Facebook parent Meta. The platform shut down its Facebook News tab last year, removed Instant Articles in 2023 and de-prioritized content shared by publishers in 2018. These moves have destabilized a lot of audience strategies for publishers over the years, with many still dealing with that challenge through 2023 and 2024.

“It’s still drastically different than it was two years ago, and certainly different than it was six years ago,” the anonymous publishing exec said during the town hall.

It’s important to note that The Hill, Newsweek and Salon are all news outlets, and the fact that they cover politics could be evidence of a “Trump bump,” or a renewed interest in news following the presidential election.

“I think there’s always interest every time there’s a new president or new administration,”  Rai said. “I think also for news fatigue post-election, now some of that has come back.”

The top stories driving people from Facebook to Newsweek’s site are political and economic coverage, Awtry said. At the beginning of this year, Meta said it would bring posts about elections, politics and social issues back into its social feeds after reducing their visibility in 2021.

“Even a few months ago, any hard news was a non-starter on Facebook,” Awtry said. “No clickthroughs, virtually no engagement. But we’ve been sharing a lot more of our hard news content post-inauguration and algorithm change, and reader interest in it has eclipsed the lifestyle coverage that has dominated for the past couple of years.”

But the increase in Facebook referral traffic that these publishers are experiencing is not something that’s happening across the board.

Chartbeat data of 3,800 sites shows that the number of raw page views has increased slightly, but not enough to show a real trend. Meanwhile, Similarweb data of desktop traffic shows Facebook referrals to the top 100 news and media sites were up 9.6% year over year in February (but down 4.75% YoY in January). Traffic was up 4.45% month over month in January and 2.19% in February.

Those who are seeing an uptick said they haven’t done anything differently on Facebook that would have warranted this initial this surge in referral traffic and engagement on the platform, leading them to believe it’s a change at the platform level.

“We haven’t done anything different,” Rai said. “We’ve stuck to doing what we’ve always done.”

Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.

Newsweek has put more resources into Facebook since the start of this year, after seeing the increase in referral traffic from the platform.

But it’s not like publishers have gotten a lot of guidance from Meta, either.

“We don’t have conversations with anybody about [publisher programs]. All of a sudden [this uptick] just shows up,” the anonymous publishing exec said.

What’s more, a new Friends tab could end up throwing this all for a loop. When Digiday asked two execs what impact that new tab — which only shows posts from friends and family — could have on their referral traffic, their answer boiled down to: we have no idea.