February Stats

[bobandbill]

Yes, this is late again. Sorry about that.

Short end - views are down again, and I'd say the drop off is more considerable. Few possible reasons but first the raw numbers:

The Raw Numbers
February total views: 117,524 (January: 262,831, December: 444,614)
February total visitors: 84,229 (January: 172,900, December: 295,818)
February average views/day: 4,197 (January: 8,478, December: 14,342)
Daily High Score: 7,180 (Best ever: 78,064 views, January: 13,468)
Lowest Score (for a full day): 3,009 (January: 4,425, December: 11,017)

February last year: 3,394 views [116/day]; 1,285 visitors.

I included the last stat there to give some perspective. We're a bit over a year old now. Our worst day last month was only a few hundred less than the full month of February in 2016 (which had 29 days!). Average day last month well above the whole of Feb 2017.So it's nowhere near panic stations, just a reminder that new generation release months are massive outliers and that's got to wind down eventually.

Image of hits/day:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

The first week drop-off is obvious. Remember that Janurary finished with the release of Bank and a new mobile app (Duel). No wonder that happened! Each week had a decrease but nothing as large as the first one. Let's see why...

Articles visited since start of month until 1st Mar:

Spoiler:

(Note that articles posted in the month have the orange tab to the left. Those with < 40 hits in the month were cut for image size.)

I put it down as mentioned to a lack of huge news. Bank is always a big hitter, and Duel was great for tPC. (Even a month on the guide for it still got 25 k.) GO was notable but we just didn't get the huge views for what we put out. This I would put down to competition. When GO launched nobody knew anything about the game. Now there's a whole bunch of sites dedicated to the game. =/ Main game news like mega stones or global missions just doesn't compete with a new game or Bank support people wanted since the release of SM.

Other reasons? Busier month perhaps (school/work in full swing now unlike the start of Jan/for some countries), and just a frankly smaller staff team over the month meaning less articles posted in general [while still doing the majority of articles by far!] (some people on leave - we have lives!). Curious if anyone has other thoughts on this.

So... what did go well? TCG set review topped the list of feb articles, so well done there ddrox13. GTS Global Mission benefitted from Bank fever, people still care about Duel, then GO and Mega Stones articles. Tracer's feature on the "pokemon war machines" fanworks rated nicely too, so more featuring of stuff like this would be neat. people also liked laughing at Ben in GO

Looking at just the older articles... first time in a while a non-SM article topped the list, huh. More Duel stuff seems wise to me.

Google-specific stats ('clicks' = views, lower than total stats):

Spoiler:

Clicks and impressions matched well throughout. Duel is top of the search terms here too...

Search engines terms (what people put in anything but Google to get to the magazine.

Spoiler:

(Removed those that gave <= 3 clicks.)

Not the case here but there are still Duel search terms near the top. (And google search terms are far larger in quantity anyway).

Google search terms by clickthrough rate (CTR; top 50):

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The funny and weird searches (that got clicks, and including google) include:

walmer [what brings this to Daily??]
when does episode 3 of pokemon sun and moon arrive
how to defeat the grunt in route 4 cave in pokemon unbound
how to use rear matle in pokémon duel
how come so many people have ex pokemon duels
pokemon duels c r ex
poke zz

Google's top clicked pages (top 50):

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Referrers (what sites people came from to visit the magazine):

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Google again. Facebook, Twitter and Reddit views dropped dramatically (hey look, another factor! Just not necessarily a significant one) but that site above it grew... interesting. It's a foreign website (Twitch Korea...?) which links to the Alola Pokedex article as a English site with said info. Thanks, mysterious friends!

Clicks (links clicked in articles)

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GEE I wonder what people wanted to find out more about. :V (Bank, Global Missions, Mega Stones).

Country breakdown:

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US on top.

 

[Z25]

Interesting breakdown. It that any new title will surely grasp attention but that isn't to surprising. The drop makes sense to as hype dies down. Maybe even stuff like Zelda diverts people's attentions from other titles. I wonder what could lead to increased viewership on other articles in future.

It will also be neat to see what increases in the next few months and what's doesn't. If E3 comes with good announcements we will surely see some increase.

And some of those google search results are pretty funny.