Nicolas Moerman

Incredible presentation. I want to view again, then respond.

Thanks, please do!

Really interesting observation.

It's probably a correlation of stuff:

1. Indeed the crisis, people needed to focus more on the basics like earning money instead of reading blogposts, news, ... But I believe we're currently seeing an upward trend again (fe http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wikipedia.org/) .

2. On the other hand is the immense popularity of facebook, twitter and youtube a factor. People only have 24 hours a day, the more time they spend on the big tree, the less time they have on other platforms.

3. A third factor (but less likely to have such an impact) is that for a lot of platforms people don't need to go the website anymore. Google trends is tracking Unique Visitors but if you read the New York Times via the Kindle or the iPhone app or an RSS feed, I'm guessing this isn't counted as a unique visit.

Interested to see what other people think about it.

I have to wonder whether this is caused by the data source. Maybe Google changed something with how it collects or reports in Trends at that time. The few sites that don't appear to have changed may have just had large enough growth to mask it.

Without a doubt, this is an interesting observation. I would be interested in whether it is corroborated by other sources. Contact the pros, such as Hitwise and Comscore. Or, even compare to Alexa and Compete.

Asking the question 'is the internet dying' is a bit silly basing things on only one data source and one year's worth of data.

@Indonesian, that's why it is a question and not a statement...

There are a few assumptions in there that I think you'll need to qualify, but indeed ncie work on the presentation.

I agree, comScore is the "moneyball" for traffic estimation, if its possible to get some access of reports from someone with access that would be a good start to fill this bad boy out!

I would say its the death of the destination Web. If you dig for Facebook stats depth of visit / time spent is actually being reported to be heading downwards, so its not really the social visititations that are killing the other site traffic levels. But I do believe the more brands and sites push people to their social media outposts vs. their Web presence, the more traffic volumes will decline. Internet users need a guide to their surfing habits, and are driven to sites that are relevant to them not always through search - media drives traffic as well.

Just my QUICK two cents

Jeff
jreckseidler.posterous.com
@jreckseidler

I have added some ComScore charts that show a different trend: http://nicolasmoerman.com/is-the-internet-dying-comscore-uk-charts

I saw your comScore reporting charts. Its tough to say if the UK panel data would correlate to North America, etc. data. I know my comScore data access (in the past) was always to the Canadian panel, and we definitely needed to be careful about assumptions we would make about traffic levels to US based sites.

More of a statement than an answer but I will see if I can't get more detail for you.

Jeff,

That would be fantastic.Let me know if you find anything!

Cheers,
Nicolas

Surely a key point here is that Google Trends reports "daily unique visitors" but others look at "monthly unique visitors" or "monthly reach". Dailies will always be more volatile. If someone visits a site twice a week instead of five times a week, the dailies will drop by more than half but the monthly is unchanged.

Presumably what advertisers are interested in is eyeball time on site -- which is why monthly uniques may not be the best measure.

I ended writing a piece for Crikey.com.au about this. Is social media killing the web as we know it? It does appear that similar downward trends are affecting Australian websites.

@Stilgherrian
Thanks for the lovely article on Crikey. I love the discussion going on there. Keep in touch if you get news from Google!

Cheers,
Nicolas

@Nicholas, thanks for your compliments, but it may be premature. I am now quite suspicious of Google Trends data. I have been sent Nielsen NetRatings data which shows a significant increase in traffi for major Australian news websites, and others are reporting the same from their own internal tracking.

I don't think we'll get a response from Google until after the US Thanksgiving long weekend. However the Google Trends forums are nearly dead, with people's questions going unanswered for months and months now. I suspect we're looking at an abandoned Google Labs project sliding into disrepair due to lack of care and attention.

The answer is a very simple, but highly unfortunate for you Nicolas. The Google Trends data is spectacularly wrong.

I hope you didn't bet too much on that horse, because it pulled up lame before it ever left the trap.

Agree w/ Stilgherrian: Goog Trends doesn't even match Goog Analytics for sites I am involved with.

Sadly, yes, Google Trends data appears to dodgy. I've posted follow-up pieces with further stats at Crikey (scroll down) and my own website. Bother.

Liked the presentation, and interesting to see all the graphs. I think you're right, that people have reevaluated what is worthy of their time. We've all had to adjust and come to terms with the fact that for one: we have to live within our means. This means both monetarily and socially as well. Living within your social means is something that focuses on time allotment and the pursuit of happiness. What makes you truly happy, and then how does that coincide with living within your means on a monetary basis? Social media is free, reconnecting with friends is free, networking is free, which inevitably translates to higher traffic on social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Being able to do so in a quick and easy manner is why Twitter is so great, saves you time and it's free as well. Its portable as well.

Again great presentation, very good 'link bait' to spark discussion. Gotta love it!

I agree with many of the other folks here. Social media is to blame. Less people are using "traditional" portals and spending a majority of their time on social networking sites. People are relying on the network to bring them the best of the news stories and other media. No need for YAHOO! if you get all the stories you're interested in from Facebook Friends and Followers.

Hi Nicolas, came across this artcle :http://tiny.cc/Uhx3t and had to think about your pres immediately. Seems in the US now twitter and fb attract less visitors (month of november). My guess is the economy is doing better and office people have less time to tweet etc..what's your idea?