Drop in U.S. referrals

Google and other SE referrals

[bobmark]

Hi,
This is not exclusive to Google but since mine and most everyone's referrals are mostly Google I put it here.
In 2003 and especially in February I have noticed extreme variations in Google.com and Yahoo as well as Ink fed and other referrals to my Canadian site.
Some days - like Saturday - U.S. referrals will drop dramatically even though Canadian and world referrals stay more or less the same. I mean drops much greater than my usual daily variation pattern.
I am not talking U.S. only holidays like President's Day, I am referring mostly to Friday and Saturday traffic in 2003.
Anyone else noticed this or have any ideas?

[msgraph]

Saturday traffic has been dropping off for me too. In January, I had great weekend traffic and poor traffic on the weekdays. Now it is just the opposite. February was just a weird month and hopefully everything will even out on the weekly spectrum this March.

[OntheEdge]

Weather, all the Canadian's have their front door froze shut, nothing else to do but go online.
Seriously, though February is the most fickle month in almost any other industry. Some people are pessimistic, depressed cause they think winter will never end....others are optimistic and start to gear up for spring.
Also maybe there was something distracting the US audience over the weekend...i dunno, like...War?

[john5]

That is an interesting topic. I have a Germany based web site both in English and in German, but most of my traffic and my sales come from the US. I can notice very different traffic patterns. For some I do have an explanation, for some I do not. And not only for traffic, but for sales as well. For the last 4 to 6 weeks I had expected fewer sales from the US and more from Europe due to the stronger EURO and the political events with European allies like Germany. To my surprise the opposite happened. Lack-luster buying of the Europeans and strong showing by US customers. I also noticed a sudden increase of google.com traffic of about 20% over the last two weeks - meaning it cannot have anything to do with better SERPS. Sometimes strange trends occur and I have no explanation.

[bobmark]

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one.
I had thought of political events as an obvious explanation, OntheEdge - as 70% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the Canada/U.S. border, we do tend to notice American political concerns - but if that's the explanation, the concerns of the U.S. population apparently only affect their surfing on certain days of the week.
john5, I too tend to try and interpret traffic patterns but, like you, am frequently stumped. One thing I have noticed is that geography seems to have become more important as my U.S. sales - as opposed to traffic - has become very much East Coast/West Coast with little coming from the centre of the country (yes, I know that the East and West Coast populations are very dense relative to the centre, but still the pattern seems to exceed mere population distribution).

[Powdork]

I too noticed this. I think it may have to do with Valentines day falling on a Friday and just killing that whole weekend. I also noticed Y! pulling in front of G for several of my sites. This, I think, is due to my site pulling up to #15 for a competitive phrase. This puts me on page one of Y! results.

Plus, I think people are curbing their surfing habits currently so Google can update. Its very polite really. I wish G would comply.:)

[sandalwood]

I think "weather" has also to do with weekends traffic!Don't you think?