

Gawker's Traffic Numbers Are Worse Than Anyone Anticipated - ctide
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/gawkers-traffic-numbers-are-worse-than-anyone-anticipated/237594/

======
alex_c
I blocked most Gawker sites from my Google search results, because all the
URLs seem to be broken and it takes me a few seconds of staring at a page
unrelated to my search before I remember that and hit the back button.

I simply don't understand the point of the changes they made.

Edit: from one of the comments on the article (I'm even more confused about
their changes now):

"Another thing that may be contributing is that after the redesign they,
Gawker, put some national redirect for Canada that actually breaks the links
and just dumps you on the home page. This has become so frustrating that I
don't actually go to gawker sites anymore and used to log into lifehacker and
i09 nearly daily."

~~~
JonnieCache
I get this in the UK. I've never managed to read a gawker article.

~~~
barrkel
The problem is their completely moronic geo-ip auto-redirection technique of
inserting a 'uk.' subdomain prefix. Deleting the prefix will usually let you
view the desired article.

The fact that they haven't figured this out by now tells me there's something
very wrong in their software camp.

------
semanticist
Gawker sites have become barely usable for me - if I click one of their
hashbang URLs it will sometimes helpfully redirect me to uk.sitename.com,
losing the hashbang part and so leaving me at the front page and not the
article I'm trying to read.

It's really annoying and entirely unnecessary. A blog is not a web app and
doesn't need to be built like one.

~~~
arctangent
Their site is completely unusable for me too. I'm amazed that they haven't
fixed this, and amazed that it made it through testing without being spotted.

~~~
megablast
I go to m.gizmodo.com, which makes it partially useful, and the stories are
readable if clicked from there. Of course, when you try another gizmodo link
it fails.

What a disaster, but will they have the balls to go back?

~~~
ilikepi
Hmm...yes, m.gizmodo.com seems to work, provided you manually remove the '#!'
and leave the rest of the URL alone.

In theory if one had a web server running locally, one could add gizmodo.com
to /etc/hosts and map it to loopback, then configure said web server to catch
gizmodo.com and rewrite the URL to redirect to m.gizmodo.com instead...

Like this perhaps, using Apache's mod_rewrite:

    
    
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}     kotaku\.com$ [NC]
        RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING}  _escaped_fragment_=(.*)    
        RewriteRule ^/(.*)           http://m.kotaku.com/%1 [L,R=permanant]
    

edit: hmm, might need this set after the one above, for URLs without
_escaped_fragment_:

    
    
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}     kotaku\.com$ [NC]
        RewriteRule ^/(.*)           http://m.kotaku.com/$1 [L,R=permanant]

~~~
john-n
Easier solution, if you use chrome
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlknelhingldnlmpgn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlknelhingldnlmpgnmkkmpoibgehijo)

Im sure FF versions exist, and it uses ca.site, so it has the old design.

------
justin
A friend of mine at Gawker told me that Nick Denton got the idea for the
redesign and made them do it despite the protestations of members of the team
(like, everyone selling the ad inventory). It is regarded internally as a
colossal fuck up forced upon them from above.

------
mscarborough
FTA: "Nick Denton wrote in to argue that the site's internal tracker has been
broken for two months."

Really? Gawker has not had web analytics for the last two months, after a
major redesign? That is hard to believe.

Gawker has also had a broken 'Back' button in Firefox, where you can click on
an article and it requires 3 Back clicks to get you somewhere you didn't mean
to go.

Gawker sites are now also serving out giant pages -- the images are not saved
for web viewing (generally huge compared to their pixel area and could be much
smaller with non-lossy compression). I checked out Firebug one day after the
redesign, and saw almost 2MB of JS, in separate files and not minified.

I would like to hear about the process for this. Unfortunate, as I used to
enjoy Deadspin as a go-to break time site.

~~~
saturn
> Really? Gawker has not had web analytics for the last two months, after a
> major redesign? That is hard to believe.

That also struck me as highly doubtful. Many people here work on big web apps;
the idea that something as critical as analytics could be broken for _two
months_ is ludicrous. My manager would be having some sort of embolism if it
was down for two _days_. After 2 weeks, I'd probably be fired. After another
two weeks he'd probably be fired!

Analytics are the bread and butter of large web sites. If they go down, you
basically stop doing business. It's inconceivable. Denton has the motivation
to lie, so it's pretty clear that's what this claim is.

~~~
cookiecaper
"Broken" may mean something other than "totally, completely broken". Maybe
there's some odd bugs that cause an occasional misreporting, and they're
trying to hammer these out. Maybe you can only log in sometimes. I don't know,
but I think that broken could mean something besides "we can't look at any
data at all".

------
tomkarlo
I was never a daily visitor to Gawker or Gizmodo, but I used to end up there
fairly frequently via links. What I've noticed over the past few months is
that they seem to have dropped entirely out of the online social media
"conversation" - you don't see people linking to them, you don't see people
twittering their articles, etc. I don't have any technical explanation for
that, but maybe the redesign was especially off-putting to heavy blog readers
most likely to reblog/retweet things?

~~~
petercooper
In my case, none of the links to their site go to the advertised page any
more. If I click on one of their search results, the respective home page
loads but never the article.. That bug's gotta be decimating their traffic.

------
mgrouchy
Not that I'm a big fan of Gawker as a whole, but I want to know who the hell
thought it was important for gawker to have an ajaxy interface with ajax page
loading of posts.

Its a news site, literally the entire purpose of the site is to show text and
(some)pictures, why try to make it fancy?

~~~
smhinsey
I used to work on a high profile old media site, and based on my experience
there, I believe that the motivation is that it's easier to game ad metrics
with stupid gimmicks this way. Approximately at the time I had lost hope and
was looking for an exit, they were working on a new photo gallery that would
count each "next" click as a new page impression. In short, it allows you to
muddy the water around what exactly constitutes an "impression."

~~~
mrkurt
To be fair, an "impression" isn't really a great metric on a page that people
sit on for >1 minute.

The guidelines we worked under at my previous job basically said "if a user
action changes a substantial portion of the page, it qualifies as an
impression". It seemed pretty fair to me at the time.

Advertisers (especially with rich media) get ridiculous interaction metrics
from their creative, they know what people are doing with their ads. Lots of
them are happy if an ad sticks on a page for half a minute and is then
replaced.

------
ambiguity
Ever since the redesign their sites are almost unusable on my machine. When
will sites realize that floating part of the page so that only part of it
scrolls not only leads to lag but also makes for a visually confusing user
experience. Slashdot did this exact thing with their header when they
redesigned their site several months ago, luckily they have since switched to
a fixed header.

Not only that, but I seem to get a 2px gray line that fills the width of the
page and scrolls with the content. Ever since the redesign, every time I
stumble upon one of their pages I click the back button.

But if that was not enough, they traded a system where each site had its own
look and feel for one where every site looks exactly the same (except for a
small logo in the header).

------
MortenK
It's hard to know the exact drop in traffic. It's probably more than Nick
Denton's claimed 7% but probably also less than the ~85% drop this article
claims. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. In any case, even 7% is
a pretty massive drop following a redesign.

It's interesting because the content is the same, only the packaging and user
experience has changed. It seems that reader-loyalty on news sites like the
Gawker sites, Techcrunch etc, and community sites like Digg, is actually very
low. Probably much lower than the sites themselves believe.

I dropped Gizmodo before the redesign, partly due to the stolen iPhone
incident, but mostly due to every other article being Apple related, with the
ensuing mindless and juvenile MS / Apple bashing in the comments.

Lifehacker I dropped after the redesign, as it just didn't work very well any
longer.

Lucky for me, and everyone else except the blog networks, is that other
content more suited for my tastes, is only a URL away. I have no commitment,
no subscription or any other reason to ever look back.

Thus I think the point to take home, is that you should listen to your users /
readers, no matter how obnoxious or "trollish" they might chose to express
themselves. It's easy to just dismiss and ignore a point of view, if it's
expressed with profanity. But below the profanity, there is usually a reason
or argument, which you must find and listen to. At least if it's a recurring
theme (i.e. "the new design sucks").

If you don't listen, you risk loosing your "loyal" users, probably much faster
than you ever thought possible.

------
radioactive21
It's just odd watching large sites repeat the same mistakes. First digg, and
now the entire Gawker sites. It's as if they paid no attention to how badly a
major change can have on their viewer base from past experiences.

Seriously, if you are going to make major changes to your website, do what
many other sites have done. First you put up a discussion with features and
looks that you want, then wait and see the reaction. If it's positive move to
the next phase, create a beta page and randomly divert a viewer to the beta
site. Then have an option to input opinion so you can see reactions.

Shocking your viewers with change is a horrible way to go about updating your
website.

~~~
arn
"do what many other sites have done"

What sites have done this?

~~~
MartinCron
What sites Have done iterative and incremental changes, initially deployed to
subsets of their users? I can immediately think of: Facebook, Amazon, twitter,
zappos, and flickr.

It's generally not newsworthy because it generally doesn't lead to totally
disruptive fiascos.

------
MartinCron
We should all be thankful for both Gawker and Digg for being such spectacular
counter-examples. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes, sometimes you get to
learn from other peoples' mistakes.

------
dr_
The redesign is a disaster but honestly Gizmodo lost me as a visitor a while
ago.

Maybe I'm in the minority but personally I still find it a bit stunning that a
site like this would pay for stolen property and then display it online. Even
if it doesn't turn out to be considered criminal activity, it's ethically
reprehensible.

------
esw
If anyone wants to view Gawker sites as they were before the redesign, just
append ca. as the subdomain (like <http://ca.io9.com>). Even knowing this, I
still visit io9 1/10th as often as I did before their redesign.

~~~
greyman
Thank you! Very useful hack.

------
zby
I have something to confess. I've been reading about this Gawker site for a
long time already (probably ever since it became popular) - but I don't know
what it is, I don't remember reading any article from it, only articles about
it. Is it another us-centric thing, like the Super Bowl? Or maybe it is just
not geeky enough for my liking? Well - to be honest I am not that interested
in the answer to this question. I am already assuming that it is not an
interesting site.

~~~
greyman
It is actually a bunch of several blogs, not just one site. They were quite
popular before the re-design. It's not an us-centric thing like the Super
Bowl.

------
pak
What's broken traffic for me to the Gawker-hosted Kotaku is that Steam doesn't
correctly redirect links from its feed of game-related articles to the
hashbang targets, so I wind up at the Gawker homepage and wonder WTF is going
on.

That was probably the only reason I ever visited Kotaku, and now I know better
than to even try clicking.

------
shadowsun7
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with the October
deadline for Denton's bet with Rex Sorgatz
[http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/02/nick_denton_gawke...](http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/02/nick_denton_gawker_redesign_bet.php)

(By October, Denton promises to pay $10 for every 1 million pageviews below
510 million, and Sorgatz has to pay $10 for every 1 million above 510
million.)

Also, a minor correction with this article:

 _Gawker backtracked rather quickly on the redesign, adding a button to switch
the site back to a traditional blog format, which allows readers to scroll
through post headlines and excerpts in reverse-chronological order. But by
then it may have been too late._

AFAIK, this button has been available since the beginning of the redesign.

~~~
timmaah
No.. the switch to traditional format option was added after the site were
live for 2 or 3 weeks. (At least on Jalopnik) It is the only reason I went
back to reading Jalopnik.

~~~
shadowsun7
That's odd. I remember switching to the classical display on Lifehacker as
soon as I saw the redesign.

------
aresant
Relevant update in the original post:

"Nick Denton wrote in to argue that the site's internal tracker has been
broken for two months. "Those numbers are total pageviews from all sources for
all sites," he said, referencing Quantcast data. "We were doing about 100m a
week. At the low-point, we dipped to 75m. We're now back at 93m."

Denton is definitely a spin artist but I don't see a huge incentive for him to
flat out lie given his advertisers can instantly see their campaign display
metrics etc and pay on a CPM basis . . .

~~~
weeksie
You'd be surprised. I bought some ads on their network and despite promised
metrics, I've had nothing from them other than vague quotes. Luckily I didn't
drop too much cash.

------
te_chris
I used to be a daily consumer of gawker and gizmodo, I just can't handle it
post redesign.

I really liked the old design, it wasn't broken and sure as hell didn't need
fixing like this.

------
Tycho
I used to check SomethingAwful.com daily, until they changed their home page
layout from a scrolling log of new articles (so you always saw the new stuff
at the top) to a 'portal' style layout where you had different little zones
promoting content from different writers. I can't quite put my finger on why
it put me off so much. I've literally barely been back to the site at all. I
guess the extra cognitive work being asked of me - to decide which updates I
wanted to look at - was too much.

------
Stwerner
I used to frequently scan through gizmodo and lifehacker quickly every day or
two and open any article that looked even a little interesting in a new tab. I
remember being really disappointed when the redesign happened at first and the
way I interacted with and used the site was no longer as painless.

------
marshray
I know I'm at a Gawker site when it comes up with an empty frame (I normally
have Javascript disabled). So I just close the tab and move along.

What a bunch of retards.

That reminds me, I'd been meaning to unfollow Lifehacker on Twitter.

~~~
te_chris
2005 called, it wants noscript back

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Your privacy and security called, it wants noscript back.

------
franze
well, looking on what is indexed in google
[http://www.google.com/search?q=site:lifehacker.com/&hl=e...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site:lifehacker.com/&hl=en&prmd=ivns&ei=vuevTfr4GKjO4waIzOWTDA&start=70&sa=N)
there was at least a partial SEO f*ck up involved (and yes, google referred
traffic is important for tabloids and other technology blogs)

------
navs
Quite bearable if you view the sites on a mobile browser or just change your
browser's user agent.

------
bzupnick
i heard that the reason for the re-design was partly because there are more
pages viewed. meaning more advertising. so, i guess they thought it would
bring in some more money....dont think that worked out to well.....

------
portentint
People keep telling me that the Gawker redesign was for tablet computers.

Bull.

Someone at Gawker decided This Was The Way To Do It, ignored everyone else,
and in the process flew their business into the ground.

I doubt they'll ever go back. The execs would probably rather lay off 10
writers than admit they were wrong. Pisses me off to no end.

~~~
joshmaker
When I first saw the redesign, I thought it was kinda weird but would probably
be great on an ipad. But when I checked it out, the navigation was broken.

I checked it again just now on my iPad to see if they had fixed the problem.
This time my iPad was redirected to the "mobile" version of the site - which
is just a long list of headlines without any pictues.

------
Hisoka
Is it possible that the Google Panda Update may have contributed to it as
well? If people want good content, I can't imagine a bad design would deter
50% of users... even Craigslist is horribly designed

