Internet users who click on links posted on Facebook that lead to news and media websites are more loyal to those portals than those coming from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise.

Among the most popular top 5 print media websites for the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google news. The same was true for broadcast media, with 77 percent returning for Facebook compared to 64 percent for Google News.

Heather Hopkins, Senior Online Analyst, Hitwise, collected the numbers using clickstream data. The metric reports the percentage of visits by source (i.e. Google, Yahoo! Google News, Facebook, etc) that were new versus returning. New visitors are defined as those that haven’t visited the site within the past 30 days.

"Interestingly, visitors from Google are less likely to be returning visitors than average for either Google News or Facebook," said Hopkins.

"This reinforces the long term value to News and Media organizations of working with the likes of Google News and Facebook."