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The Facebook Newsfeed Algorithm update had a huge influence on web-traffic via The Atlantic

About the middle of October, a number of news organization websites started to see huge numbers of visitors flowing from Facebook. Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel reported that Buzzfeed and its partner sites had seen traffic from Facebook surge 69 percent between August and October.

The change wasn’t out of nowhere. In August, a Facebook corporate blog post hinted that the algorithm that controlled the site’s News Feed was changing slightly, such that “stories that people did not scroll down far enough to see can reappear near the top […] if the stories are still getting lots of likes and comments.”

It sounds like a little change, but it’s hard to overstate the importance of the News Feed… And a traffic jump of the size Warzel reported could only come with a change in the News Feed algorithm.

For the past two months, traffic has been surging to news publishers. Facebook dwarfs Twitter—and every other social network—such that an algorithmic change like this quickly makes it the largest referrer to most news sites. A programming change is all it takes to remind publishers who’s boss.