Overall traffic drop in summer

Some new data to back up that conjecture

[luong]

A couple of weeks ago, as I observed that my traffic
in June was 30% lower than in May,
I inquired whether the web
showed a global traffic drop in summer. I just came on
an interesting bit of data which seem to confirm that:
On Alexa, with 4.3 page views per user, the rank
of my site was on "today" 44.392. However, the
3 month average of 6.9 gives only a rank of 45.986.
This statistic would indicate a dramatic drop in global
traffic in summer.

[me2287]

The is interesting, however it depends on the location and target audience of the web site. I live in Australia, so we are currently in the middle of our two-week winter holidays, and summer for us involves a five-six week holiday in December-January. Our school year is also aligned with the calendar year, unlike yours. To me, it seems weird to have such a long break in the middle of the year!

[StanBo]

True enough. June traffic drops occur to almost any US audience aimed sites (excluding tourism related ones). But in another hemisphere it might (or should) as well happen in January

[TheDoctor]

Every target audience will have its own calendar based around the priories of its members. For example, I run an academically-related site in the UK, and visits fell by fifty percent during the UK university marking season (mid-May to mid-June). Numbers then shot back up to the previous level.

I suspect a pattern like that on a commercial site, if it wasn't expected, would have the webmaster sweating!