Traffic Behavior On Google.

Peaks And Valleys

[JoeHouse]

Why does it appear that early part of the week Mon, Tues, Wed, my site receives great traffic from google with good sales but the remaining days Thur thru Sun things drop off greatly?

Has anybody else notice this pattern?

[GoogleGuy]

It may depend on what sort of site you have. Seems like recreational/non-work sites (e.g. adult sites) tend to do better on weekends, for example. I think this is probably due to the natural cycle that people have. Lots of people try to get work done on Mondays. :)

[onfire]

Well up until this week we were seeing just a drop of traffic from Friday,Sat & Sunday with low hits, But then Monday was back to normal, however this week has seen a big change, in that traffic from G has increased 50% since Sunday and has been consistent all week.

Have not made any major changes, and its a New site which was put up in May, so it has no PR and is only showing 3 backlinks, we have more but they are just not listed yet.

However the GBot has been every day, and for our Keywords we do very very well, and there is always freshtags showing and the whole site is cached.

Things may be improving, I would just like to see my PR appear and the backlinks I have been working on show up, but its seems nobody really knows if there is going to be a deep update, where all my backlinks will suddenly appear and my site gets PR, or is G really now on a rolling/dynamic update? if it is when can I expect to see my other links show up as they are 4 & 5s so they should count.

[Mohamed_E]

> Lots of people try to get work done on Mondays. :)

Lots of people also enjoy surfing on their employer's broadband and time. My site (outdoors recreation) gets much less traffic on weekends, then a surge on Mondays, fairly steady at a lower level during the rest of the work week.

[twilight47]

I had just noticed a traffic pattern change this last week. Normally, week-ends drop off 50%. Saturday was normal, and then Sunday was up like a regular weekday. Mon, Tues, Wed, were all normal, then Thurs, yesterday, major drop, as if a Holiday. I don't know the explanation, as all of our keywords SERP rankings are the same.

[ALbino]

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have always been my biggest Google days (with Monday being the highest). And by a pretty big margin too, probably close to 20% higher on Monday than say on Friday.

[Jungle_Jim]

We have a travel site and our traffic is similar to Mohamed_E's. That is we get a lot of traffic during the week (daytime hours -- presumably while people are at work). Traffic drops off significantly over the weekend.

[BigDave]

Yup, mine is outdoor recreation too. Traffic starts climbing Sunday evening when people get home from their trips. Unless it's a holiday, Monday is always our biggest day. I figure people are searching on gear they need to replace that they had problems with over the weekend. :)

Then it's fairly steady Tuesday through Friday noon, at which point it drops to about half normal.

For our users, work is the time when you plan your weekends, LOL.

[soapystar]

what amazes me is that the daily totalsfrom week to week are so similar..its different people coming in off the searches....but basically the same number every week..amazing...

[eraldemukian]

getting off topic

Seems like recreational/non-work sites (e.g. adult sites) tend to do better on weekends, for example.

Thats what I thought as well. I found a couple of apache server-status pages for a couple of those sites. I ran a little bot against themc for a week, and resolved the IPs against the long/lat location.

I had hoped that the data would create a nice timelapse flash movie where the browsing activity would rotate around the planet together with the sun. Along the lines of "24 hours of global pr0n usage in 30 seconds"

First disapointment: free available ip2ll tools are not very helpful. They think the world is 95% USA.

Second surprise: those sites have constant traffic, day in day out.
Not really possible to make out any patterns.

To bad, would have been a nice application for perlMing.
Sorry can not post URL for resulting flash movies due to ww statutes.
Sorry2 for getting so off topic.

[Seattle_SEM]

I think that Internet search traffic is a lot like the foot traffic at your local mall: completely random, yet completely uniform.

I spent a few years managing retail sales, and no discernable pattern of foot traffic can be surmised. The only constant is that society at large seems to have the same idea, at the same time, for whatever reason.

So when it's dead, no one is shopping, and when it's busy, everyone is shopping. Everyone seems to get the same "basic instinct" about what to do when, and I would posit that this would hold true for Internet searches, as well.

GG, are we gonna see any more traditional updates?

[dragonlady7]

It seems fascinating. Somebody should do a psychological study or something. The type of person who looks at porn does his recreation at home. the type of person who does outdoor adventures does his websurfing at work. etc. Social scientists should have a field day.

[eraldemukian]

Social scientists should have a field day.

They would, if google would make their data sets available for research. That would beat the donation of a search-appliance box [inform.umd.edu]

5 years ago certain people said it would be great:
point 6.4 [citeseer.nj.nec.com]

Maybe google does that already, and I simply do not know about it.

[jcoronella]

Probably a big variation based on the weather as well.

[gopi]

what amazes me is that the daily totals from week to week are so similar..its different people coming in off the searches....but basically the same number every week..amazing

Exactly soapystar , One of my site deals with a widget people buy maybe one's in 2 years , so its pretty much new people coming every day ... But i see a clear pattern (Mon-Wed high traffic and decreases thro sunday ) and even almost the same exact traffic numbers...

It really amazes me and even make me think that nothing in the world is random and everything follows a mathmatical equation ... I guess it will be a great fun to work in Google's Log analysis team .

Related Interesting wired article:-
[wired.com...]

[JoeHouse]

I am new to this internet traffic but I would venture a guess that during the holidays particularly Christmas all this peaks and valley stuff goes out the window in regards to traffic.

I am guessing there is a nice and steady flow of heavy traffic every that of the week? That is of course if your site is geared towards product gift selling etc...

What has been your experience through this holiday for you veterans who have lived through it?

[skylighter]

I sell a product that is used by both hobbyists and manufacturers. We have noticed that we have very heavy traffic Mon-Wed with most purchases being small from the hobbyists. Thursday and Friday see less traffic, but larger dollar purchases from the manufacturers. Saturday and Sunday are like a ghostown most weekends. This pattern is consistant 80-90% of the time.

I think the observation is correct. People like to play at work!

Skylighter

[PatrickDeese]

I track about 20 sites ranging from travel destination information, to biographies of counter-cultural "anti-heroes", some belong to me, some belong to clients.

Across the board, the lowest day of the week is Saturday.

I would agree that "erotic" surfing is probably more likely to be in non-working hours, but it seems strange that a hotel in $destination, a funeral industry product supplier, and a site with biographies, all tend to show similar "peaks and valleys" in the visitor stats.

[JoeHouse]

I have been tracking the percentage of google traffic on the weekends verus during the week the last 6 weeks and the numbers tell this story.

During the week (Mon thru Fri) 80+ percent of my traffic is supplied by google.

On Sat and Sun the numbers are quite different.

They are as follows:

MSN: 53.3%
Google Search 33.3%
Yahoo Search 10.0%
Yahoo Directory 3.3%

Now how do you explain this? Do people actually search other engines on the weekends? Weird.

[Kirby]

MSN: 53.3%
Google Search 33.3%
Yahoo Search 10.0%
Yahoo Directory 3.3%

Now how do you explain this? Do people actually search other engines on the weekends? Weird.

Just a wild guess, but perhaps those surfing on weekends are more likely to be at home and maybe using a default MSN homepage. If so, this illustrates the fickle nature of Joe Surfer and a lack of SE loyality.

Whatever the reason, my MSN traffic is up dramatically and now almost equals Google (less Y! and AOL).

[lioness]

I've also noticed a correlation between weather and traffic. The traffic for Sat and Sun will be down unless there is bad weather in at least 2 large areas of the US. Makes sense; people are home surfing the web, instead of outside enjoying themselves. Of course, the weather can't be so bad (i.e. Hurricane, etc) that people are too busy/worried to be on the computer. It has to be just that middle of the road, too gloomy to go out, bad weather.

[GoogleGuy]

Wow--it's really interesting to read how different sites have traffic that varies with time, the weather, ... Next I'm expecting to hear a webmaster find correlations with the stock market or phases of the moon. :) Neat stuff..

[Dayo_UK]

As one of my sites is a stockbroking site then we certainly do have correlations with the stock markets :)

Don't know about phases of the moon - any werewolves sites out there?

Weather is real good in the UK this weekend and traffic is way down. (That sounds a bit like a Radio report - perhaps thats the way Radio reports will go ;) )