When Will Internet Traffic Stop Tracking American Holidays?

By ryancaldwellTraffic

It’s July 4th here in the USA. One of our most celebrated holidays, and one that almost everyone, including Ryan Caldwell, takes off from the Internets.

So my question to you is this: since the United States of America only makes up something like 1/18th of the world’s population, and since many large regions like India, China, The Middle East, Europe, Korea and Japan have pervasive internet access – when will we stop noticing American holidays on our site statistics’ graphs?

Maybe it’s just that I’m an American. Or maybe it’s because I’m largely unaware of other holidays. But I still get a strong impression that Internet traffic mirrors American culture and American holidays. Shouldn’t this be changing? Or has it already, and I’m just witnessing an illusion?

Thoughts?

6 thoughts on “When Will Internet Traffic Stop Tracking American Holidays?”

  1. downtime like July 4th is a good time to a) take some time off (duh), b) work on some linkbait (if you’ve got no social life, that is) or c) get your blog in order via a DIY blog reboot.

    Maybe I think too much about work, but when you’ve got a relaxed workweek anyways holidays can be a good time to get an edge over your competitors.

  2. An English website that caters to a US audience is going to see swings based on US holidays.

    As for the general trend, I think Raj has the right of it. Americans make up a large percentage of internet users, and spend a lot of time on the internet. It is not quite as pervasive everywhere else.

  3. But yes, traffic does reflect American holidays. It’s not that surprising. If you partition all 990 million Internet users, the US still has the most for a single country, as far as I know. Total traffic from other countries versus US may be more, but that really depends on a site by site basis. Some older sites of my had mostly foreign traffic (i.e., “foreign” from my perspective, which is outside North America).

    But since other languages (i.e., Japanese) now have a prominent slice of the content in the blogosphere (according to Technorati), traffic patterns may change.

    Still, I would hazard a guess that of the Americans online, they probably spend more minutes per week online than any other country. So I’m still inclined to think that American holidays will have the greatest negative effect on sites. That’s been my observation for two years now.

  4. Umm, it’s July 3rd today. Have you finally gotten hold of a Tardis and stepped into the future, Ryan?

  5. Point taken. But my understanding is that there is an Internet wide traffic drop-off on a day like July 4th, even on non-US targeted sites.

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