Google is the No. 1 source of referral traffic to major news sites in the United States. The search giant provides approximately 30% of the traffic to these sites.
So what's the No. 2 source?
Facebook?
Twitter?
Nope, the NYT's David Carr points out.
It's The Drudge Report.
Matt Drudge provides 7% of the traffic to major US news sites.
Facebook only provides 3.3%.
This should give anyone crowing about the "social media revolution" a bit of a pause.
The Drudge Report is now 14 years old. It's a single page with a list of hand-picked links and excellent headlines. And it gets 12-14 million unique visitors a month--most of whom immediately click through to somewhere else (and then come right back).
Like other successful Internet entrepreneurs, Matt Drudge figured out quickly how the web was different than other media (millions of sources a link away), and he concentrated on taking advantage of that. And he has never done anything else.
And, 14 years later, he's now the single most important man on the web, as measured by traffic referrals. And because links, headline commentary, and traffic referrals are a form of influence, it seems fair to say that Matt Drudge is also one of the most influential men in the world.