• GigaOm, Thursday, February 2, 2012 12:23 PM

Online, Pinterest is now driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn combined, according to a new study from content sharing company Shareaholic. Surprised by the finding, GigOm admits: “Pinterest, the website which lets people collect and share photos online with a ‘virtual pinboard,’ has steadily amassed a very dedicated following of users that spreads far beyond the app-obsessed early adopter crowd.” In January, Pinterest was responsible for 3.6% of referrals tracked by Shareaholic -- up from 2.5% month-over-month. Twitter, by contrast, drove 3.61% of referral traffic in January -- down from 3.62 percent in December. “Pinterest’s ascent has been especially rapid when viewed through a longer lens,” GigaOm notes.

Indeed, “The site owned just .17 percent of the traffic in Shareaholic’s July survey.” In the realm of referral traffic, Facebook and StumbleUpon remain top dogs, with more than a quarter of all referral traffic and 5.07%, respectively. Shareaholic says it referral traffic reports are based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers, which reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month.

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