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It's interesting that the sum of their traffic is relatively constant. That implies SO really is eating at their traffic specifically. But it also implies SO
by smartbear 17y ago
It's interesting that the sum of their traffic is relatively constant.
That implies SO really is eating at their traffic specifically. But it also implies SO isn't encouraging new traffic, and that the general market for Q&A isn't growing.
- dpritchett 17y agoSO has 25% more visits per visitor. That says good things about the site's stickiness and interaction. I would've expected the discrepancy to be even larger but I suppose there are people who voluntarily use EE.
- Confusion 17y agoI found it interesting that the sum actually isn't relatively constant. The sum is steadily declining from 1.89M in februari 2009 to 1.65M in februari 2010. Given the ongoing growth of the internet (and the population), the total traffic should have increased, making the shrinkage all the more interesting. I'm guessing there are either Asian sites eating away a substantial market share or that the measurement methodology of Compete has been changing.
- alanstorm 17y agoMy guess would be on their measurement methodology. The about page reads: "We have a diverse sample of 2,000,000+ U.S. Internet users that have given us permission to analyze the web pages they visit and ask them questions via surveys." That translates as sketchy toolbar/shareware installs and checkboxes that are checked by default.
- iron_ball 17y agoAnd that means this stat likely does not reflect the usage habits of technically proficient users, because they are the least likely to have allowed those grayware installs.
- aaronbrethorst 17y agoWhich would imply SO's traffic is dramatically under-reported. In fact, August they had a blog post that indicates Compete's data is off by a factor of 15, and this was 7 months ago! http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/one-year-of-stack-overflow/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/08/one-year-of-stack-over...
- huhtenberg 17y agoIt just means that Google is getting better at serving correct A's for common Q's, and so there is less need for visiting specialized sites as these two.
- mnemonicsloth 17y agoMost of the drop occurs during the winter holidays, when people have less time to work. The biggest dip is reported for January and probably corresponds to numbers taken in December. That still leaves 12% decline between this February and last, though.
- billybob 17y agoAnother possibility: SO just sucks less. It takes fewer page hits to find the answer you need. This is my experience, anyway.