In June 2008, roughly around the time when Google made Trends for Websites available, I wrote a post about some sites & their trends. Mainly just trends I found interesting. It’s now June 2009 so I thought it would be fun to revisit the same graphs.

This time I’ve limited the graphs to ‘last 12 months’ as opposed to all-time.

ALL GLOBAL TRAFFIC: The rise & rise of Facebook
I’ve put Twitter in there just for fun. I wonder though if Google can’t see all the Twitter ‘views’ that occur on feed readers, iPhones, smartphones, etc.

NZ TRAFFIC ONLY: Bebo hangs in there
I am actually surprised Bebo isn’t showing more of a decline. I suppose it’s that tween/teen demographic I kind of don’t really care about (sorry!)

It’s tight in E-Commerce
I get to answer my question! We might assume Ferrit’s sale didn’t help because Ferrit is now gone. I think their press release at the time was a combination of “this idea was ahead of it’s time” & “we’ve moved online business in New Zealand forward with Ferrit”. It just sounded hollow. What is that analogous to? The Titanic? The Hindenburg? Thanks for coming Ferrit.

What is that thing they say about slow-moving giants?
I actually find this the most interesting graph. Compare it with a year ago. For TradeMe, let’s call that roughly a 15% decrease in traffic on the average in 2008. Still, I don’t think anyone would be predicting their traffic to drop off over the next 12 months.

The irrelevance of Slashdot
As noted by John Gruber. People are obviously still visiting Slashdot but it is a shadow of its former self. I think it needs editors choosing & writing up its news rather than republishing user submissions.

Google Trends for Websites is an approximation of the amount of traffic Google thinks your site is getting. So while not 100% accurate, it provides some interesting insights.

The rise of Facebook

But for NZ traffic only, it’s all about Bebo

Ferrit’s sale is seemingly helping their traffic (but is it helping their bottom line?)

TradeMe is bigger than the internet
This is TradeMe compared with some signicant international sites. And it dwarfs them.

The fall of Slashdot

I’ve been looking for ping services and free web statistics tools for On Web Culture, below is what I’ve come across…

Free web statistics tools via contentious.com (updated):

http://www.google.com/analytics/

http://www.sitemeter.com

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

http://www.webtrends.com

http://mach5.com/products/analyzer/index.php

http://www.tracewatch.com/

http://www.addfreestats.com/

http://bbclone.de/

http://www.trafficfile.com/

http://www.haveamint.com/

http://www.summary.net/

http://www.reinvigorate.net/
http://statcounter.com new

Unfortunately Google Analytics is invite only at the moment, sign up here.

XML-RPC Ping Services [codex.wordpress.org]