Comments on: Why has MetaFilter traffic spiked so fast?

Why has MetaFilter traffic spiked so fast?

bru — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:52:35 -0800

Does anyone know why MeFi has almost doubled its reach during the past 2 weeks? Just curious.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:02:27 -0800

popurls.com is probably part of that.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:08:31 -0800

i mentioned the site to a few close friends.

By: horsewithnoname

horsewithnoname — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:13:22 -0800

I credit all the recent posts involving genitalia.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:16:25 -0800

DailyKos has been down.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:18:28 -0800

Increase in Astro Zombies.

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:18:49 -0800

The NSA keeps checking the political threads to update their records.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 08:20:40 -0800

"DailyKos has been down."

LOL

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:04:38 -0800

Alexa is BS. I can't believe that people still watch it.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:32:06 -0800

Is school out in some areas?

By: cortex

cortex — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:49:06 -0800

The rapture has occurred, and none of the saved were mefites.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:01:47 -0800

In an extension of a previous marketing plan, anyone who is not logged in to Metafilter just sees a mirror of Suicide Girls when they visit metafilter.com.

By: perissodactyl

perissodactyl — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:13:54 -0800

One more person downloaded the Alexa toolbar... for a grand total of two?

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:32:45 -0800

Matt fed the JRun server some imodium.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:40:03 -0800

huh, I did upgrade the db server two weeks ago, so we can serve more people without the site slowing down, but it doesn't seem like activity on the site is way up.

By: evariste

evariste — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:38:51 -0800

This site is getting overrun with Alexa Toolbar users. I can't be part of such a stupid demographic.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:44:37 -0800

I have a little alexa plugin for firefox, all it does is tell me the page rank (and the google Page Rank as well). It's actually pretty slick.

But yeah the Alexa toolbar will still give you a rough estimate of popularity

By: reklaw

reklaw — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:16:52 -0800

Surely the most likely situation is that mefi got linked from some site full of Alexa toolbar-using fools.

By: allen.spaulding

allen.spaulding — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:48:03 -0800

Ever since Steve asked Cathy if we we had a date to the junior prom, everyone's been asking if we're a couple.

By: bru

bru — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:33:44 -0800

Whether akexa is "BS" or "a rough estimate of popularity", is there any alternative to compare its results to? Is there any other website giving an estimate of the traffic of any site?

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 13:48:27 -0800

*Waves to quonsar's mom and her cat*

By: Dub

Dub — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:01:46 -0800

Search me.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:03:53 -0800

Umm... Google PageRank?

By: MonkeySaltedNuts

MonkeySaltedNuts — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:14:42 -0800

MSNBC has at least on one page, a little box labled "links" that include the following links:

• All Music
• Arts & Letters Daily
• Boing Boing
• Internet Movie Database
• Joe Bob Briggs
• Jump the Shark
• Lost Remote
• Metafilter

• Pop Culture Junk Mail
• Reality Blurred
• Romenesko
• Television Without Pity
• TV Barn
• TV Tattle
• X-Entertainment

I checked the traffic for boingboing and they too have a large jump around April 15. Maybe MSNBC started their gratitious link box then.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:16:05 -0800

You are a true Internet detective, MonkeySaltedNuts.

By: bru

bru — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:32:02 -0800

Interesting, MonkeySaltedNuts, thanks.

boingboing publishes openly its own stats and the number of "unique visitors" (2,103,490) seems to match alexa's only since the past 2 weeks.

I guess it should be checked with other sites' numbers (Matt?), but from boingboing's example, it looks like the change around April 15 has come from a change in alexa's method of measurement that seems to match reality closer, right?

By: twiggy

twiggy — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:52:00 -0800

It should be pretty easy for mathowie to see where the most referrals come from.. surely he uses some sort of webstats stuff like awstats, webalizer etc?

By: Nelson

Nelson — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:58:55 -0800

Flickr has a similar large jump. Must be something b0rked at Alexa.

By: Decani

Decani — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 17:02:43 -0800

I tipped off the Feds.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:56:43 -0800

I tipped off the Feds.
Yup. with every single govt. agency apparently all spying on all of us, hits are bound to go up.

The cameras vibrate at midnight, praise goatse.
/not a secret coded message

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:57:44 -0800

The only authoritative source for hit numbers is the site itself... of course, with all this coldfusion stuff I don't know if Mefi actually keeps stats...

By: Gator

Gator — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 03:58:48 -0800

MSNBC has at least on one page, a little box labled "links" that include the following links:

That thar MSNBC "Test Pattern" blog is actually by our own lovely GaelFC.

By: carter

carter — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 12:17:40 -0800

Borked forking in the multiple universe(s)?

By: raedyn

raedyn — Mon, 01 May 2006 08:52:31 -0800

One more person downloaded the Alexa toolbar... for a grand total of two? - perissodactyl

Took the words outta my mouth.