Facebook changes news feed to focus more on posts from friends and family
Facebook has tweaked its news feed algorithm so users will now see more content from family and friends and less from publishers.
The change comes as a blow to publishers who heavily rely on the social network to share stories and direct traffic to their sites. According to a recent report from web analytics firm Parsley, 41.4 percent of referral traffic to news sites comes from Facebook.
In a blog post, the company said that the change may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some publishers.
Publishers that receive the majority of their traffic from people sharing, liking and commenting on their posts will be less affected than those whose audience tends to come to their site directly through a Facebook post.
The company did not state how drastically these changes will affect publishers, but advised them to “post things that their audience are likely to share with friends” moving forward.