Why has MetaFilter traffic spiked so fast?

April 29, 2006 7:52 AM

Does anyone know why MeFi has almost doubled its reach during the past 2 weeks? Just curious.
posted by bru to MetaFilter-Related at 7:52 AM (31 comments total)

popurls.com is probably part of that.
posted by loquacious at 8:02 AM on April 29, 2006

i mentioned the site to a few close friends.
posted by quonsar at 8:08 AM on April 29, 2006

I credit all the recent posts involving genitalia.
posted by horsewithnoname at 8:13 AM on April 29, 2006

DailyKos has been down.
posted by LarryC at 8:16 AM on April 29, 2006

Increase in Astro Zombies.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:18 AM on April 29, 2006

The NSA keeps checking the political threads to update their records.
posted by Tuwa at 8:18 AM on April 29, 2006

"DailyKos has been down."

LOL
posted by ParisParamus at 8:20 AM on April 29, 2006

Is school out in some areas?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:32 AM on April 29, 2006

The rapture has occurred, and none of the saved were mefites.
posted by cortex at 9:49 AM on April 29, 2006 [2 favorites]

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.
posted by Krrrlson at 10:01 AM on April 29, 2006

One more person downloaded the Alexa toolbar... for a grand total of two?
posted by perissodactyl at 10:13 AM on April 29, 2006

Matt fed the JRun server some imodium.
posted by furtive at 10:32 AM on April 29, 2006

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.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:40 AM on April 29, 2006

This site is getting overrun with Alexa Toolbar users. I can't be part of such a stupid demographic.
posted by evariste at 11:38 AM on April 29, 2006

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
posted by delmoi at 11:44 AM on April 29, 2006

Surely the most likely situation is that mefi got linked from some site full of Alexa toolbar-using fools.
posted by reklaw at 12:16 PM on April 29, 2006

Ever since Steve asked Cathy if we we had a date to the junior prom, everyone's been asking if we're a couple.
posted by allen.spaulding at 12:48 PM on April 29, 2006

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?
posted by bru at 1:33 PM on April 29, 2006

*Waves to quonsar's mom and her cat*
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:48 PM on April 29, 2006

Search me.
posted by Dub at 2:01 PM on April 29, 2006

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.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 3:14 PM on April 29, 2006

You are a true Internet detective, MonkeySaltedNuts.
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:16 PM on April 29, 2006

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?
posted by bru at 3:32 PM on April 29, 2006

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?
posted by twiggy at 3:52 PM on April 29, 2006

Flickr has a similar large jump. Must be something b0rked at Alexa.
posted by Nelson at 3:58 PM on April 29, 2006

I tipped off the Feds.
posted by Decani at 5:02 PM on April 29, 2006

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
posted by amberglow at 6:56 PM on April 29, 2006

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...
posted by blacklite at 11:57 PM on April 29, 2006

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.
posted by Gator at 3:58 AM on April 30, 2006

Borked forking in the multiple universe(s)?
posted by carter at 12:17 PM on April 30, 2006

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

Took the words outta my mouth.
posted by raedyn at 8:52 AM on May 1, 2006