Forum Moderators: phranque
Is this because of the good season and people are spending less time surfing the web or perhaps because for some reason my site is ranking less well? Perhaps some major search engine changed something in mid-May?
One way to check if its caused by a change on one particular SE is to check the ratio of referrals between different SEs.
Perhaps some major search engine changed something in mid-May?
Hmm... guess you haven't been reading the Google update threads! :)
Do you track traffic from each search engine individually? Do you monitor your rankings at all? It certainly seems possible that recent changes at Google may have affected you.
I saw a Nielsen//NetRatings stat where they estimated that there were 1.2 million less surfers in the U.S. for the month of May.
Universities account for a large amount of internet traffic.
Probably not as significant a percentage as they used to be some years ago, when home internet access was less common (the days before usenet's "September That Never Ended"), but certainly that is a possibility.
Checking changes in the ratios of traffic between the various search engines does seem like the way to tell.
Hmm... guess you haven't been reading the Google update threads! :)
Well no. What happened?
I don't check the ratios of the individual SE as this is time-consuming. Referers of even the same search engine can have differing structures, making the process of counting hits for a certain search engine quite cumbersome.
Google 19532
Yahoo 5067
MSN 4972
AOL 1068
AltaVista 541
The ratios (just using the top 5 to make it quick) are:
Google 62.6%
Yahoo 16.3%
MSN 15.9%
AOL 3.4%
AltaVista 1.7%
If the percents (over a week or so of data) vary by more than a few % then I start investigating.
Typically my sites see a similar drop in hits when Universities are not in session.
A slightly different take on the same lines:
I run a UK-based academically-related message board. At the end of May the number of visitors plunged to about half the previous level. This last two weeks, I've seen the level restored. In fact, this week looks like having seen the highest number of visitors ever.
The fall in the number of visitors seems to have correlated with the UK University exam-marking season. There was a similar dip over the same period last year, but the board was new then and the pattern then is only really noticeable in retrospect.
Each site will have its own seasonal pattern, but I don't think there's any question that overall web traffic bottoms out in the June-August time period.
All across the northern hemisphere, schools are getting out, and people are away from the office and generally spending more time out of doors.
jomaxx, are you based in the USA? We've had amazingly warm weather in Britain this last couple of weeks, but it'll take more than that to get Brits out of doors. In fact, my prediction of my site receiving a record number of hits this week (monday to sunday) has proved correct (though not miraculous, considering the daily performance of my counter), despite the tempatures being higher than ever.
As far as the variation - dip then recovery - being related to search engines is concerned: I don't yet have accurate figures, but the impression I've got from the figures is that the proportion of non-Google referrals increased during the period when the number of visitors fell. This suggests that the fall in numbers was a consequence of people not putting relevant keywords into Google searches. This period coincided with UK university exam-marking season. Maybe UK academics rely disproportionately on Google.
(I suppose the reason I'm posting this here is a subconcious desire for anyone with a better idea to shoot me down.)
Each site will have its own seasonal pattern, but I don't think there's any question that overall web traffic bottoms out in the June-August time period.
In my case we are approaching peak season: July and August. My site is about the outdoors, so people consult it during the outdoors season.
