At any given time, around 40% of your website’s traffic is internal traffic, or traffic that’s already on your website and recirculating to additional pages. This behavior is a sign of a healthy and happy readership because recirculation doesn’t just boost engagement, it starts the journey toward loyalty.

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To truly unlock the value of these visitors, we need to trace them back to their original entry point. How are these readers finding your website — search, social, direct? — and how does this shape what they do next?

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To answer these questions, we analyzed traffic patterns across more than 4,000 websites in 70 countries, mapping both the origins and behaviors of recirculating readers. Our goal? To help media companies understand who’s most likely to engage deeply and how they can build better on-site experiences to convert more visitors into loyal readers.

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What’s Inside

• Why internal traffic is your biggest source of pageviews, and what that really means
• A breakdown of where internal traffic first lands on your website
• Which referrers and devices drive the deepest sessions and highest engagement
• What you can do to turn visits from all of these sources into loyalty

A breakdown of referral sources at the pageview level

Redistributing traffic by original referrer

How sessions vary by referral source

How device and loyalty influence sessions from each referrer

How specific platforms like Google Discover and Facebook compare

Key Findings