Despite client demands for viral news, new research has found over three fifths (67%) of news articles are not shared on social media channels.
The data, collated from six million online news stories by CoverageBook, found that 14% were shared across X, Facebook and Pinterest between an average of one to nine times, while 19% were shared over 10.
Revealed in the CoverageBook PR Benchmarking Report 2025, the figures indicate that budget holder’s requests for stories to ‘go viral’ could not align with what actual virality looks like. The report claims “achieving between 10-19 shares places you in the top 10% of most shared coverage results”.
In comparison, only 1.68% of articles are shared between 1,001-10,000 times on X, Facebook and Pinterest.
It also found that PR professionals are increasingly landing coverage on UK and US media websites with High Domain Authority (DA) with a range of 90-100 — such as MSN, Yahoo, Forbes and Daily Mail Online — representing 15% of URLS in 2024. This marks an increase of 1.5% since 2020.
Read the full report with breakdowns for what is considered “normal” across major news outlets here
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