Are you seeing more referral traffic from Threads of late?
According to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, the Threads team has been working to improve the reach of links in the app, with a view to encouraging more publishers and creators to post to the app.
As per Mosseri:
“We’ve been working on making sure links are ranked properly. Links have been working much better for more than a month now.”
Of course, “ranked properly” doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be shown to more people. But as part of Meta’s broader reformation of its moderation approach, it has pledged to showcase a wider breadth of content to more users, which should mean that links do indeed see better resonance.
Though “should” is the operative word here.
Meta’s history with link traffic has been rocky, with the platform upping link post reach at times, in order to lure in more publishers, then cutting it off again, whenever it decides to change its content priorities.
But in theory at least, Threads should be a valuable driver of traffic, if it does embrace a more real-time news approach, in order to challenge X.
Back in November, Mosseri claimed that the Threads algorithm doesn’t actually downrank link posts, but:
“…we don’t place much value on [link clicks] and people don’t like and comment on links much.”
Though it has seemingly switched its approach of late, by allowing users to add more links to their Threads profile, and displaying link posts more often in the app’s recommendations.
Meta also added link performance analytics last month, so you can see how your link posts are actually driving traffic (or not).
So it is seemingly making link posts a bigger focus, and therefore allowing more reach for link updates.
But still, I don’t know how much reliance I would put on any Meta app for traffic.
According to Meta’s latest “Widely Viewed Content Report,” currently, 97.3% of all post views on Facebook in the U.S. do not include a link to a source outside of that app.
That’s actually a slight improvement on the previous report (+0.6% on link posts), but it serves as a reminder that, if it could, Meta would prefer to keep people in its apps, as opposed to referring them off to some other platform or website.
Which makes sense, but it’s important to keep this motivation in mind when assessing your Meta app referrals, and how much subsequent reliance you can put on that stream.
Many businesses have learned the hard way that Meta giveth and Meta taketh away in equal measure. And while Threads should be focused on real-time updates, including relevant links, and it should rank link posts accordingly, that doesn’t mean that it’ll maintain any referral flows over time.
But maybe, right now at least, you could be seeing more Threads referrals.
