Click-tech company Chartbeat has flagged a possible fall in Facebook traffic, drops varying by region.

The company’s Jill Nicholson says recent weeks have seen several partners reporting a “notable drop” in the traffic they receive from Facebook, wondering, “Is Facebook traffic really down, or is it just us?”

The New York-based chief marketing officer says analysis of network-wide traffic from sites in more than 70 countries shows that, while traffic can fluctuate from week to week, a downward trend began in early May, and that global Facebook traffic has “declined significantly”.

“Total traffic driven by Facebook to sites in our network has declined steadily week over week, dropping by more than 18 per cent over a six-week period,” she says.

As a proportion of overall traffic, she says the pattern looks less severe. “In the first week of May, the social platform accounted for about eight per cent of global traffic, and dropped to 7.3 per cent by mid June.

Global Facebook referral data in pageviews, according to Chartbeat

Certain regions were more affected by the global trend than others, with Facebook traffic in North America dropping from an average of 57.6 million daily pageviews in the first week of May to an average of 45.4 million daily pageviews in recent weeks.

European and Middle Eastern sites, on the other hand, saw almost no decline over the same period.

Regional Facebook referral data in pageviews, according to Chartbeat

In Latin America and the Asia Pacific, the decline in traffic was steady, but less pronounced than the pattern seen in North America.

The analysis shows global traffic from Facebook declined from May to mid June at a faster rate than overall traffic in Chartbeat’s network, with North American sites seeing a 21 per cent drop in pageviews. Traffic in Europe and the Middle East was relatively stable.

Chartbeat plans a webinar to explore and expand on global traffic and engagement data on July 28.