Does Big News (e.g. Tokyo Tsunami) Affect Other Google Traffic?
frank72
3:18 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
Sorry for starting such a sad thread which could look like disrespectful of what it is happening in Japan. However I am here to talk about the effect of such a terrible news on Google and other search engine traffic.
Is anyone experiencing traffic drop because of such a news?
ckissi
3:52 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
My started about 7 hours ago. Maybe because of this maybe not. Don't know. Big problem for Japan colleagues now. Hope they'll recover soon from this disaster. Good luck guys !
aly48
4:05 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
Almost guaranteed. Anything that takes our eye of the ball and disrupts our concentration. Can be a tragic event, huge sporting event or even extreme weather, smow etc. A worldwide event like Japan earthquake makes us all stop and look, a local sporting event like the superbowl will mostly effect US, if we get heavy snow disrution in the UK it does the same.
Aly
ckissi
4:22 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
I see about -8% now. Seems to be worldwide.
chalkywhite
5:03 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
someone has already registered the domain related to this, namely the country and the event.
trakkerguy
7:43 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
someone has already registered the domain related to this, namely the country and the event.
I checked an hour after, and all tld's were already taken.
The .com was "last update" jul 2010.
crobb305
8:02 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)
Ok, I can't resist this because this is no joke, but my site was spanked by Google yesterday (probably the Panda update), and I lost 60% of my traffic -- the same day as the Japan earthquake. Last year, my site was hit with a -50 on the SAME DAY as the Haitian earthquake. Not exaggerating. So when we say Google is shaking things up, we mean it lol
So to answer your question, yes, in my analyses, earthquakes do affect Google traffic :)
Whitey
6:40 am on Mar 14, 2011 (gmt 0)
They definitely do - 30 years of business has taught me that sentiment and focus is disrupted away from decisions by major events.
In 18 months down in the SW Pacific we have had the Victorian bushfires , Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquake - now on a global scale the Japanese tsunami / earthquake.
Every business i connect to, web and non web is effected by human sentiment. And now we are so much more connected with media , this will be more frequent and ascentuated.
But my heart goes out to these folks, and honestly running a business is a poor second place compared to the needs of those people right now.
Thinking Japan
louieramos
8:09 am on Mar 14, 2011 (gmt 0)
One of our new micro news site (unique news article everyday) have experienced a big spike last 11th of March 2011 when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, from 150 UV a day, now in the past 3 days it had 3K, 1.5K and 2K UV respectively.
So I guess it does affect other Google traffic because it takes people's time reading more about this news instead of spending on their regular or occasional search, shopping and other online stuff
piatkow
11:16 am on Mar 14, 2011 (gmt 0)
Not seeing any visible effect myself. I am not an expert on how web traffic is routed but I imagine that some comms cables would have been damaged pushing up traffic loadings on other nodes around the web.
StoutFiles
12:13 pm on Mar 14, 2011 (gmt 0)
People only have X minutes to spend on the internet each day. If they're reading about Japan's crisis, then naturally they have less minutes to spend on your site. Well, unless your site is about Japan, earthquakes, or tsunamis, of course.
frank72
12:28 pm on Mar 14, 2011 (gmt 0)
personally speaking on sunday I experienced -20% still do not know if it is Panda or Japan news...maybe both?
