In today’s inter-connected web, the importance of a network is stronger than ever. Web pages no longer stand on their own, and having links to other pages is seen as key. Most websites now have some sort of integration with the big social networks, whether it is a ‘Like’ or ‘Tweet’ or ‘+1′ button, or a deeper, more comprehensive integration.
How many web pages connect to Facebook and how many web pages is Facebook connected to? A recent study by Zyxt Labs attempt to answer this question. They studied a sample of about 1.3 billion URLs from Common Crawl and analysed the links. Here are the results from the study:
- 22% of web pages contain Facebook URLs.
- 8% of web pages implement Open Graph tags.
- The most widely-used integration is the ‘Like’ plugin which is referenced in 15.69% of web pages.
- The most popular Open Graph tags are ‘hotel’ and ‘movie’ at 1.55% and 1.31% respectively. Other popular tags are ‘song’, ‘book’, ‘band’ and ‘restaurant’.
- An occasional Facebook user with only 20 friends is likely to be connected to 20,000+ entities, and an active user with around 1000 friends is likely to be connected to hundreds of thousands of entities.
Matthew Berk, the founder of Zyxt Labs, explains the interconnections:
Social networking isn’t solely about the people (although Wall Street may value it that way): it’s about the interconnections between structured content, entities, and people. And in the long term, that fabric will be the legacy of social networking and the battleground for digital meaning.
These interconnections are also the cornerstone of social media marketing, and most valuable for brands. Do you agree?
