WebProNews

Video sites should thank comedy shows, car magazines, and news anchors for traffic - they've been plugged by all of them.  Search engines and social networks also belong on that list, though, and new Hitwise data shows that they're about even in terms of significance.

Social networks used to be noticeably more important, but they crossed paths with search engines early this year, and did so again more recently.  Heather Dougherty writes, "The share of traffic referred by Google (up 44%) and Yahoo! (up 13%) to the video category increased for the week ending April 12, 2008 when compared to the same week last year."

 Hitwise Statistics

Also, "While MySpace accounted for the largest share of referred traffic, there was a 25% decline when compared to the same week during the previous year."  This means MySpace has an upstream share of 22.54 percent, Google follows with 19.04 percent, and Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Search mop up with 4.58, 4.14, and 4.14 percent, respectively.

If these trends continue, content creators might want to start thinking about how SEO principles can apply to their titles and descriptions.  MySpace, which is already fighting Facebook on one front, will have to worry about its popularity in this respect.  And Google and Yahoo will have something else to lord over their competitors.

Well, whatever.  So long as episodes of "Arrested Development" remain available.