MetaCPAN vs search.cpan.org
Based on the Google Analytics data of search.cpan.org and MetaCPAN
Data for the period of March 20, 2016 - March 20, 2017 describing where do visitors arrive from in percentage of the total number of visits during that period:
search.cpan.org MetaCPAN
Organic Search 81.18 % 36.34 % Direct 8.54 % 15.58 % Referral 7.77 % 40.26 % Social 2.51 % 7.81 %
An in absolute numbers:
search.cpan.org MetaCPAN
Organic Search 4,440 K 694 K Direct 467 K 298 K Referral 425 K 769 K Social 137 K 149 K TOTAL: 5,469 K 1,910 K
74% of the total visits arrive to search.cpan org and 26% to MetaCPAN.
So a much bigger % of people arrive to the old and closed-source interface of CPAN via random search than by any other mean.
Interesting still more people go directly to search.cpan.org than to MetaCPAN. At least some of these people do that because they don't know about MetaCPAN. I've just encountered a company where few were even aware of MetaCPAN.
See also the number of visits to CPAN throuought they years.