I noticed a strange drop in traffic across many forums.

jonsidneyb

jonsidneyb

Well-known member
I have not been out here for awhile but something strange is going on.

I noticed my forum was getting slower but it is not just my forum.

On similarweb I took a look at my forum and found that on September 13th I was getting 110k views I climbed slowly to 260k views on Jan 19th then things took a nose dive and by Feb 16th I was back to 120k views. All of my data is from Sep1 to Feb16

I sent a message to one of my admins and he shot back data on some other forums. He showed me 7 other forums that went into rapid decline starting either Jan 19th or Jan 26th. The forum I looked at have ranged from losing 1/3 to 2/3 of their traffic. Out of the 7, 2 of them are starting to show mild recoveries starting on Feb 2nd while others have continued to drop.

I started checking random forums and I am finding this trend all over the place.

I looked at Xenforo and between Jan 19th and Feb 2nd it dropped from 190K to 100K then bottomed out and is having a modest recovery.
 
Surely it just indicates that fewer similarweb data gathering users or bots visited (since that's where they get their data from)?

It's a bit like taking Alexa data as gospel - don't!! (y)

However, that's not to say you haven't had a slow down - what does your Google or other analytics data tell you (based on actual activity at your site/server)?
 
Clickfinity said:
Surely it just indicates that fewer similarweb data gathering users or bots visited (since that's where they get their data from)?

It's a bit like taking Alexa data as gospel - don't!! (y)

However, that's not to say you haven't had a slow down - what does your Google or other analytics data tell you (based on actual activity at your site/server)?
Click to expand...

I am also seeming the log in count change at about the same ratio. I normally have 400 people logged in about now. I am at 250, during the day here almost never dropped below 500 and was closer to 700. It has been in the 400's during the day time.
 
edcftraffic.webp
 
One of my members commented that another site they go to has had a drop in participation. They took a hard dive on January 19th as well.

bushcraft.webp
 
The site you're using isn't correct. Compare it to your own analytics from google.

That site shows our traffic in February as a quarter of what it was in January. We do see a drop between Jan->Feb but it's MUCH less severe and I imagine it's pretty unique to our forums as we run a football site and January is our peak season (for transfer related news).
 
Just out of interest Jon - what do your XF stats show from your ACP for a similar time period - posts, threads, active users?
 
Not sure what it's like elsewhere but around here colleges are often off for most of January and classes resume near the end of the month- if your audience is college aged they could be transitioning back to classes.
 
The same period is captured here plus some extra days. Similarweb it looks like to me shows how many people visit and the internal stats are showing logins.

I think that it makes since for logins to lag visits.

stats6.webp


edcftraffic.webp
 
BirdOPrey5 said:
Not sure what it's like elsewhere but around here colleges are often off for most of January and classes resume near the end of the month- if your audience is college aged they could be transitioning back to classes.
Click to expand...

You might be right. We have all ages, many 50-60 year olds but a lot of 20 somethings as well.
 
I don't think it is college students after looking again. I need learn to interpret data. This goes back to when I moved to XenForo. I remember that day the forum was down. I don't see the this the same thing for January of 2013 and the February decline that is continuing into march.

stats3.webp
 

Similar threads

M
  • Question Question
XF 1.1 Significant drop in traffic since vB switch - hasn't recovered
Replies
18
Views
2K
Jake Bunce
Jake Bunce
Back
Top Bottom