If you’ve ever looked at a website’s analytics and thought, “Wow—those numbers look huge!” … you’re not wrong. But here’s the catch: a lot of that traffic isn’t coming from people intentionally seeking out your content. It’s coming from aggregated news feeds—places like Google News, Apple News, Facebook’s suggested articles, SmartNews, or MSN.
These platforms can make analytics look inflated… without giving you real, engaged readers.
Here’s why.
1. Headlines Count as “Views” (Even When No One Clicks)
Some feeds count an impression the moment a headline appears on a screen.
The reader doesn’t need to click anything.
If the headline appears multiple times? Multiple impressions.
Result: Big impression counts… very little real engagement.
2. Auto-Previewing Creates Fake Traffic
Many news apps auto-load or “preview” articles in the background.
An analytics system sees this as a pageview—even if nobody intentionally read the story.
Result: Pageviews go up, but time-on-page goes down.
3. Preloading Makes Unique Visitor Counts Look Huge
News apps often cache (pre-load) articles before a user even decides to read.
Analytics sometimes counts these as new visitors.
Result: The “audience size” looks much bigger than it truly is.
4. “Drive-By” Clicks Lower Quality
Facebook, Google, and other feeds sometimes show an article randomly (“Suggested for You”).
People click out of curiosity… and bounce right back out.
Result: Lots of clicks, almost no meaningful reading.
5. Time-on-Page Becomes Unreliable
If an app reloads the page after the user switches apps, analytics may stitch these sessions together.
It can look like someone spent 20 minutes reading when they didn’t.
Result: Engagement numbers can’t always be trusted.
6. Sudden Traffic Spikes Don’t Mean Loyalty
Aggregators often “test” articles by showing them to random audiences.
That creates:
One-time bursts of traffic
Sudden attention from non-local readers
Numbers that look like growth but aren’t sustainable
Result: Temporary spikes ≠ long-term audience.
So What Numbers Actually Matter?
Here’s what really reflects value for local businesses and community readers:
Local readership (Geneseo, Henry County, QC region) - ideally >60%
Returning visitors (people who come back purposely and by choice) - more than 20%
Newsletter traffic (high-intent readers) - >15% web traffic attributable to newsletter referral
Time actually spent reading - 45 seconds minimum
Scroll depth (did they reach the advertiser?) - 50% average
Clicks on local advertisers - >0.3% CTR
Engagement with community content - 3-8% minimum on Facebook for local news
Direct visits to your website - 20-30% - representative of high-intent, loyal, local audience
Those numbers reflect real people, not algorithm-generated noise. For information on where The Current falls, click here.
At The Current, we don’t buy clicks, we don’t use outside feeds to pad our numbers, and we don’t chase vanity metrics. While there will always be international and nationwide traffic, 64% of our traffic is verifiably from real people in the QCA who intentionally visit our platforms — people who live, work, and shop in our area.
Our audience is loyal, local, and engaged — not passing traffic from an algorithm. When our readers click, they stay. When they see your ad, they remember it.
So, while others may tout inflated totals, we’ll take accuracy, authenticity, and community trust every time. Because the most important traffic is the kind that comes from people who intentionally choose to read, shop, and engage locally.
Local readers → local impact → local results.
That’s the metric that matters.