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Facebook, Google gaining the most traffic from Pinterest

Pinterest is growing like no tomorrow, but which websites are gaining the most from the new social network? It turns out that Facebook is seeing the most traffic, followed closely by Google.
Written by Emil Protalinski, Contributor

We already know that Pinterest, the fastest-growing social network, has seen the number of Facebook users visiting the site explode after it launched its Open Graph integration: daily visitors increased by more than 60 percent. Nevertheless, one has to wonder about the other traffic direction. It turns out Facebook and Google are gaining the most from Pinterest's huge growth.

As you can see in the screenshot above, courtesy of Experian Hitwise, Facebook saw 10.50 percent of Pinterest's outbound traffic and Google saw 7.63 percent last month. Every other site saw under 2 percent of the total Pinterest pie.

For those that prefer text, here's the full list of 20 websites, in decreasing order: Facebook, Google, YouTube, Etsy, Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Search, Martha Stewart, Bing, Amazon.com, Polyvore, Flickr, Windows Live Mail, Better Homes and Gardens, eBay, www.sixsistersstuff.com, Twitter, Tumblr, and Apartment Therapy.

Experian Hitwise didn't share data for inbound traffic but we can speculate that such data would be quite different. While I can see how Google is driving a lot of traffic to Pinterest (image search, Picasa, Gmail, and maybe even Google+), I think Facebook's effect is smaller. I would bet that Google is first or second when it comes to giving Pinterest traffic, but Facebook is nowhere near the top.

Because of its stupendous growth, some are calling Pinterest the next Facebook or even a Facebook killer. Frankly, I think if Pinterest maintains the hype and manages to survive long enough, it will simply live on as yet another social network among the big guys: Facebook and Twitter.

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