Hitwise senior online analyst Heather Hopkins said in a blog post titled Facebook Visitors Come Back Again and Again that according to data from her company, Facebook users who visit news and media Websites return to those sites more often than similar users of Google News.

Hopkins wrote:

A few weeks ago, when I posted my blog entry about Facebook being the largest news reader, I received a few comments and emails noting that visitors aren’t as valuable if they don’t come back. Advertisers and retailers need some assurance that visitors will return again and again.

Hitwise data indicate that visitors from Facebook are more loyal to news and media Websites than are visitors from Google News. In particular, among the top five print-media Websites in the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google News. The figures are almost identical for broadcast media, with a 77 percent returning rate for Facebook compared to 64 percent for Google News.

To offer one example, 81 percent of visits to CNN.com in the week to March 6 were returning visitors, while 84 percent of visitors to CNN.com that came from Facebook were returning visitors, and 72 percent from Google News were returning visitors.

I’ve been encouraged by some readers to include Google.com in this series. In most cases, Google.com is the No. 1 source of traffic to these sites. Interestingly, visitors from Google are less likely to be returning visitors than average for either Google News or Facebook. This reinforces the long-term value to news and media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook. With recent Pew Research showing that newspapers have seen ad revenue fall 26 percent during the year and 43 percent over the past three years, understanding where to find loyal readers is becoming increasingly important.