I’m still curious as to whether or not you have experienced a drop off since your Digg banning?

Very interesting. I was wondering why my RSS feed fluctuated so much. One day I had 7, the next day, 4. I thought people were dropping like flies on me.

Now it makes more sense ;o

Thanks i was wondering what that was all about my blog slowed down to not like i had much traffic but my other site http://www.dodigg.com hit a all time record today weird eh! I think it is because it is a site where you watch tv shows and movies anyway keep up the great work.

John - Thanks for that explanation. I was under the impression that it showed the number of subscriptions, not the number of polls in a day. Now I don’t feel so bad when I drop a few.

That is obvious. What I wonder is if traffic decreases in the summer because people are out more?

I also wondered why the figure varied so much. Thanks for the explanation!

I thought it was rather obvious. I mean, who’s going to read our sites during the holiday season?

oh i had no idea that’s what that number meant!! thanks for the clarification

Yes, it is obvious less people will visit sites during the holidays. But what a few of us didn’t know was what the RSS number represented. I assumed it was total subscribers, which is why it was baffling to see the number fluctuating so frequently.

Yes, thank you for the explanation John. I was also under the impression that it had to do with the number of subscribers.

Your blog isnt the only one with traffic going down, 21 of my proxies are experiencing all time lows, but luckily still ENOUGH to cover the huge server fees for this month.

It seems like all sites are taking a hit this time of year…around what time does the traffic really start to pick back up again?

Yeah, I figured it was obvious that traffic would drop, but I didn’t know about how Feedburner’s counter worked. Thanks John.

Thats interesting - I always though that FeedBurner said how many people have subscribed to the feed

That makes it ridiculous that some sites have FeedBurner stats in the XXX,XXX range or even in the millions

Wasn’t your FeedBurner counter up at 4000+ at some point? Just for about a day though.

Anyways, FeedBurner stats are estimates. One doesn’t actually have to read the feed, having your Firefox’s live bookmark ping the feed for updates is enough for a counter to hit.

Tony - Someone adding my site to his or her feed creates a hit. On the day when the counter went pass 4,000 was the day after the high tech urinal story. Thousands of people added the blog to their RSS, but for whatever reason, they haven’t checked it since.

This is normal, it’s also the same during the summer months when people are outside enjoying the hot weather. I’m on a vacation right (Dubai/RAK) now–both on my blog and in real life. It’s nice to take a break!

Yep I see seasonal trends across most of my sites, primarily the few days up to and including Christmas, then a slight uptake again (people getting bored of pressies, eating, and relations?!), and then another dip around new years eve and new years day.

Its obviously even worse for some industries, such as educational sites (who the hell wants to study over Christmas holidays!)

I wasn’t aware that was how the feedburner counter worked, so thanks for the explanation.

Matt

Me for one check the blog everyday lol

And here is my obligatory mention of web counters as a great compliment to the feed counter.

For the most part, there seemed to be a drop, but on Dec 26, my traffic shot up and continued to climb back up and beyond normal levels as of today. The blog is still climbing out of the hole, but Mac Daddy Futurelooks.com is back where it should be.

Traffic will peak again as I head to CES in Las Vegas to cover the show. I’m already on track to destroy last years numbers.

I am expierincing this to.. I had under the 200 visits on my blog during the christmas days.. and yesterday also..

thats too bad.. but it will probably getting back next week

Hey guys, have you heard about the quake in Taiwan? If not, just read my blog about it:
http://www.unitedwebsite.com/zoltan/2006/12/27/earthquake-in-asia-no-or-slow-internet-access/
So, if you have traffic from Asia, most probably your Asia traffic is down to about 15-20%.

Thanks for the info John, you’re right, it’s pretty obvious, though thinking from a students perspective the holidays are one big internet session

I don’t trust feedburner stats. When I check my stats it always has about 40 hits in the last 2 hours but the overall number of subs is stuck near 30.

Most people do not use my RSS feeds as I get the vast majority of my hits from Google.

I have seen an upswing in traffic since Christmas because I review games and run articles on Pokemon.

HMKTSteve, you’re right of course, those stats are only reliable when you’ve actually got a somewhat big group of returning visitors, not to mention that the average Pokemon player/gamer doesn’t know too much about RSS so they perhaps wont sign up for it at all.
I’ve tried using FeedBurner on my website as well, but I’ve only got a couple of RSS subscribers, so it’s not really useful to me either.

I have noticed this on other sites I visit. One day its 1200 and the next its like 1000. I always wonder about that.

Great blog John.

http://www.tech1024.blogspot.com

Leftblank -

I’m a techie and I hardly ever use RSS!

The only time I use RSS is when I use live bookmarks in Firefox. In that case I love RSS!

As for using a dedicated RSS reader… Maybe if I was on dial-up but with broadband it’s far easier to just go to the website.

Thanks for the explaination John!

FT
http://www.MillionDollarJourney.com

Great site! Finally an explanation on the sudden changes of RSS feeds. Thanks

SIK
http://www.studentinkorea.blogspot.com

Like HMTKSteve, I have been curious about the effects of the Digg ban as well. This was a good POST, I never realized the effects of the holidays on blogs. Very interesting.

Though many people are not online during the holidays there are some sites that do benefit from the run-up to the holidays.

Mostly tech review and game review sites get a big boost during November and December. This is caused by people looking for information before they make a purchase.

After the holidays you will see a surge in traffic on game “cheat/hint” sites.

I check my server logs often and I saw a large spike in Google traffic based on people searching for hints, tips and cheats about Pokemon games. Granted those folks do not often click on ads and those ads are in the nickel range…

I can only hope they find the site useful and come back to read more content later.

Haha.. I had already speculated that Traffic and RSS Readership might drop!!
http://tech-buzz.net/2006/12/17/prepare-for-a-traffic-dip-ahead/

The days after the holidays are often the best time for online bargain sites like a few I run - that and Black Friday/Cyber Monday off course

Nearly all of my sites witness traffic lows around christmas, after a year of online business it’s something you get used to. It’s good in some ways, less traffic = less emails = less work. Christmas is of course a busy time for e-tailers, they love it!

Unless of course you are Amazon
They reported over 4 million in orders one day around Christmas this year

Similar to HMTKSteve, I saw a noticable spike in Google traffic for ‘computer programming help’ for the entire week, but before the holidays (arguably because the school projects were due that week), followed by a crash for the holidays themselves. So yes, ’seasons’/special-days/etc have an effect on certain user demographics.

I need to get off my ass and write my review of Pokemon Ranger! I also need to ramp up on some of my Pokemon advice articles.

While I don’t get the same traffic you do, I’ve definitely experienced a drop…except when I post videos, which get linked on numerous forums. I get heavy spikes upward for a day or two.

I did not see a major drop in traffic except on 12/24 and 12/25 on most of my websites (majority is non ecommerce). So, I guess it also depends on the niche market a webmaster is catering.

Christoph

I noticed a similar dip in traffic on my website. I agree with you, at the same time I find it funny b/c my web surfing usually goes up on days off.

While I have naturally and seasonally dipped in traffic from all-time high 2,500+ daily unique visitors and 9,000+ daily page views and $17 Dollar daily Adsense income to present, less than 700 daily unique visitors, 3,000 daily page views and $6 Dollars daily adsense income respectively during the season, My FeedBurner has climbed from 777 in mid December to the present 1,052 without letting up daily.

This, strangely to me defied the correlation theory that we all discuss here. Can anybody explain this FeedBurner aberration?

I am a traffic-induced person. Anytime I see 150+ online on my blog. I quickly post fresh things for my content-hungry audience. It’s like chatting live with them because, responsive commentaries suddenly follow those posts.

All content based sites seem to witness traffic drops around Christmas, and user demographics of course vary from time to time. Unless of course the content within that site is particularly relevant like how to setup and use the hottest selling presents. Other than that the festive season is mainly beneficial to the retailers and e-tailers.

When did you experience back to normal visits to this site John? I noticably saw a big drop on our site. Since we just started we were averaging about 100 visits per day before the holidays. Just last week we got back to that level and have tripled in traffic.