
Why did HN's traffic tank so hard recently? - TekMol
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com
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remote_phone
HN has the distinct privilege of not giving a single iota about traffic.
That’s one of the things I like most about the site, a complete lack of
monetization. It’s pure in this sense.

~~~
liftbigweights
> HN has the distinct privilege of not giving a single iota about traffic.

If that was true, HN wouldn't exist.

> That’s one of the things I like most about the site, a complete lack of
> monetization.

But jobs are advertised here.

> It’s pure in this sense.

It's better than most, but it certainly isn't pure.

~~~
jamiegreen
I don't believe anyone pays to advertise jobs here (correct me if I am wrong)
but it is available for YC companies to post jobs

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scarface74
I’m wondering, is that a bad thing? I would think that the less traffic that
HN gets via Google and the more it gets as a percentage from the prototypical
tech crowd, the less comments/posts it would get that aren’t really conducive
to intellectual discussions.

~~~
kangnkodos
Alexa says that percentage of visits from a search engine has not dipped
significantly. Maybe 15% to 13%.

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mbesto
Why do people rely on Alexa's traffic numbers?

Serious question - have they ever proven to be reliable?

~~~
scrollaway
They're excellent indicators yes.

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zck
Maybe it's all the posts about Erlang
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145)).

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zirkonit
Similarweb doesn't show any significant change:
[https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com#over...](https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.ycombinator.com#overview)

Seems to be Alexa's bug, not HN's.

~~~
kangnkodos
The Alexa chart is rank among other web sites. The Similarweb chart shows
number of visits. Apples and oranges. It's possible that they are both
correct. Similarweb shows a small decrease in number of visits.

It could be that there are thousands of sites with a similar number of visits.
A small drop in number of visits might cause a huge drop in rank.

~~~
gota
Also that other sites in the same 'bracket' increase number of visits. Even if
HN's visits were increasing, they could still be rising faster.

Also when a site has been around for long you have to start taking into
account the 'population growth'; how many new people gained access to the web
this month? How many among those are tech-savy people? Does this proportion
increase or decrease over time?

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KenanSulayman
I'm not sure this is important at all for hackernews (benefit of people
visiting it directly).

But there definitely has been a significant drop in keywords where HN is
displayed on Google (probably because of the major algorithm “Medic” update on
August 1st):
[https://i.imgur.com/qCTC0xd.png](https://i.imgur.com/qCTC0xd.png)

~~~
TekMol
What does the chart show?

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chatmasta
Same trend for producthunt.com. Probably an issue of measurement, not actual
traffic. Most likely due to ad blockers and the like.

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crtasm
Is there an estimate anywhere of how many people have browser extensions
installed that report back to Alexa?

I note that for ycombinator it makes it clear figures are an estimate. To get
proper stats you need to embed some JS, right?

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WalterSear
I've had work to do.

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dang
I only just saw this, but HN's traffic hasn't tanked recently. Not sure what's
going on with that Alexa chart.

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blablabla123
Using it less to get more perspective outside of the startup bubble

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supernovae
google algo changes have been happening as well

~~~
kangnkodos
Alexa says the number of visits from web searches hasn't changes that much.

