Understanding The Viewer / Visitor Changing Habits

Data to be looked at ...

[RedBar]

I have a small SEO promotional website that has a couple of outgoing links and I just so happened to be checking the validity for one of the links when I saw this HUGE change in viewer usage.

Quite simply for the USA market Statcounter shows that until November 2022 mobile visitors were the largest audience however since then until June 2023 desktop is now more than DOUBLE mobile.

There are loads of charts here and well-worth spending, as my geeky head did, a couple of hours digesting the affects this must be having on our sites.

It's a pity that Statcounter does not give the actual traffic volumes nevertheless it must be well into the NNN millions surely?

[gs.statcounter.com...]

[tangor]

Interesting numbers! Will have to take a look and see if experiencing similar.

[aristotle]

On my sites mobile visitors tend to come from google, desktop visitors tend to come from Bing.

[MrSnuts]

Hmm, I have been thinking about possible reasons for this stat, there does not seem to be any obvious explanations on why the mobile / desktop split is looking that abnormal for the USA.
As others pointed out, that trend seems to be USA only, if you compare the EU chart for the same period, there are no signs of this.

Something let's me think that this must be rather some glitch in the stats collection then the truth,
I just cannot think of any reasons why people would not use their mobile devices any longer this year.

So, here's my list of ideas why this may look like this:
- statcounter could simply be broken. We don't know.
- maybe the portion of websites using statcounter got de-ranked in mobile search results, leading to the observed pattern. That way, their stats would not reflect reality any longer, as mobile users are still there, but just not visiting statcounter sites.
- if statcounter tracks JS based (I don't know if it does), then some privacy / third party blocker might have started to block it on mobile devices this year. Not sure why this would be limited to the US, but it could be an explanation
- if statcounter tracks log based, it must try to distinguish mobile from desktop by browser agent. That's pretty faulty, and assumed browser agents on mobile may have changed, it could be that the detection doesn't work any longer. If anything not matching a mobile-only-browser gets counted as desktop, then that would explain things. As they do not have a "unidentifiable" percentage, they obviously add any not distinguishable data to the default heap - if that is desktop, then there you go...
- last, mind statcounter probably tracks visits to websites, not usage of mobile apps. If more and more mobile users avoid opening a browser and open up their tiktok, amazon or youtube apps instead, mobile traffic to websites will go down for real - I'm pretty sure "use of mobile device vs desktop device in hours" doesn't look like that graph, but maybe mobile + non-app-internet is really going out of fashion?

[RedBar]

The July chart is now there showing a very small increase for mobile however still at half the desktop level.
[gs.statcounter.com...]

[Ali_Haider]

Adapting to the evolving habits of viewers and visitors is vital in today's dynamic digital landscape. With shifts in technology, content consumption, and user expectations, staying informed about these changing habits allows businesses to tailor their strategies, offer more personalized experiences, and effectively engage their target audiences. It's a key element in remaining competitive and ensuring that content and services resonate with the evolving preferences of the audience.