Going to drop this message into this topic, if anyone wants to comment on it:
LusterSoldier- | Posted 10/8/2011 5:32:27 AM | message detail
It's somewhat amazing how quickly the site traffic on GameFAQs declined. Just a year and a half ago, we were still getting over 100000 votes on non-contest polls. Now we are struggling just to break 60000 votes. It seems like 60000 votes is the new "100000" these days. Our highest votal of this year was 89202, which was on an age poll. But that was early in the year, when average votals were around 65000, due to MvC3 and Pokemon B/W bringing in more visitors.
There's definitely more to the traffic decline than Wikis and Youtube being used more heavily for game help. I think there has to be other factors that went into the quick decline in traffic.
From the previous topic:
IngmarBirdman | Posted 10/8/2011 11:32:44 AM | message detail
Do we have any speculation about the falling votals of late and whether the scale-back is equal across demographics? I'm curious if the site loses enough traffic, then maybe 90's games that are down-trending could reverse the process because more people that comprise the core of the site stick around and support these games / characters who were slightly stronger in earlier polls.
Although the average age of our voters has been increasing over the past several years, it hasn't had any effect on votals. Remember that we were still getting over 100000 votes last year on non-contest polls at a time where the average age was about 21 1/2 and only about 23% of the site was under the age of 18.
What I've noticed was when votals began to collapse last year, the percentage of votes from North America began to decrease in favor of an increased percentage of votes from Europe. Percentage of votes from each continent during the past 3 years:
Year | Africa | Asia | Oceania | Europe | North/South America
2009 | 0.10% | 2.77% | 2.56% | 14.65% | 77.81% | 2.10%
2010 | 0.12% | 3.10% | 2.63% | 14.92% | 76.87% | 2.37%
2011 | 0.14% | 3.07% | 2.71% | 15.46% | 76.34% | 2.28%
2009 has a whole had nearly 78% of the votes from North America, but now that's getting close to 76% right now. Europe is gaining more dominance in the polls, but I think that's because the drop off in votals was because traffic from North America decreased by a greater amount relative to any drop off in traffic from Europe.
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Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~
Popular at school, but not as cool as BlAcK TuRtLe, Guru Champ!