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There was a fair bit of chatter in the blogosphere yesterday about an analysis by Ross Sandler at RBC showing the remarkable growth of Facebook and the traffic the site “drives” to Google.

The punch line that a bunch of folks took away from the analysis was that Facebook drives 19% of Google’s sessions.  Henry Blodgett made this conclusion as did a lot of others.

But I think this stat is completely misleading, and significantly overstates the importance of Facebook to Google.  Let’s look at the key numbers that Ross discusses:

Top Entries to Google

1. MSFT Sites: 360M
2. Yahoo Site: 331M
3. Wikimedia Sites: 190M
4. Facebook: 150M
5. FIM: 126M
6. AOL: 123M
7. Ebay: 113M

So, the conclusion folks are drawing is that if Facebook brings 150M uniques to Google, and Google has 772M uniques, then Facebook drives 19% of Google’s uniques.

That is an impressive stat.  But based on that math, there are some other more impressive stats (and impossible ones):

• This same analysis suggests that MSFT sites drive 360M/772M = 47% of Google uniques.
• This math also suggests that Yahoo, Wikimedia, FIM, AOL, and Ebay all drive 15% or more of traffic to Google each.
• Looking at the flip side, the report also shows that Google traffic to Facebook is 150M uniques.  Does that mean that 100% of Facebook’s traffic is driven by Google?

There is obviously something wrong with this analysis.  And it comes down to 2 things:

1. This data does show that 19% of Google unique visitors came through Facebook at some point in the month.  That is not the same thing as Facebook driving 19% of Google’s unique visitors.  I think what the data is really saying is that all of Facebook’s 150M uniques will go to Google after Facebook at least once a month. If you think about it, that’s not really that big a deal.
2. This traffic is not really traffic that Facebook “DRIVES” to Google.  If you think about the Facebook site, where does Facebook surface links that send you to Google?  I honestly had a hard time figuring this out. Is it the ads?  Search? Something else? I’m sure it’s somewhere, but it’s not obvious enough to believe that Facebook is really driving these users.  Also, think of the other sites. How does Wikipedia “drive” users to Google? I think almost all the links are just internal.  The only link I can think of that “drives” meaningful traffic to Google is probably the “back” button.

Please feel free to debate this. But I really think this data is misleading because it isn’t really a measure of how much traffic one site drives to another.  I think the analyst’s main point that Facebook is huge and growing fast is true, and I do think that it’s a force to be reckoned with.  But I think the real reason why Facebook is going to give Google a run for its money is by mining the social graph for targeting, personalization, and identity management.  Not because of the traffic is sends to Google.

Parting Thought:

They say “numbers don’t lie”.  But as the writer Gregg Easterbrook once said: “torture the numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.”