Where is the traffic shifting to?

The last couple of days I’ve had a similar conversation with people at two different sponsors. Both are rather major sponsors who see a lot of traffic and talk to a lot of affiliates. The conclusion is that traffic is down and it’s more than just the summer doldrums - it’s a general trend that’s been going on for months. Traffic is down for blogs, for tubes, etc. The question is where has it gone? I mean I’m not going to believe that gay men just all of a sudden got less horny - it’s somewhere, but where?

In my case the only site that’s growing in traffic is my forum site, BreedingZone.com. I figured my blogs going down was just a result of me neglecting them while I oversaw our contractor (for the past year +), but apparently it’s more than that - there’s a general trend… One of the sponsors thought the traffic might be going into “social” - but what exactly does that mean? I mean it used to be that tubes were considered social, but their traffic is down, and before that blogs were considered social. A forum site is definitely social, so my increases there fit the theory, but it’s a young forum site and still has a lot of growth potential. If you look at a mature forum site like JUB - you’ll see Alexa reporting the traffic has been sliding there for a while now.

Thoughts?

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Good question. I’ve been noticing this as well. Like where is it going? And google profits are up. Hmmm. So are people just hunting for free porn? Or is there a lot of free shit out there now?

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Well, if it’s going to “free porn” then it’s going to those site - presumably tube sites and not leaving the tube site to go to the sponsor. But if you look at say GayTube and RocketTube on Alexa you’ll see they’re hurting a bit - the traffic isn’t going there and their time on site numbers aren’t looking all that great either. Of course Alexa gets it wrong sometimes - they say rawTOP is going up and BreedingZone is going down - which is exactly the opposite of reality, but they have a lot more data on sites like GayTube and RocketTube.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Maybe since people are more glued to their cell phones it’s going towards Grindr type sites. Much more exciting I’d guess to try and cruise and pick up that look at porn.

People seem to be texting a lot more, too. If you’ve got a network of friends and past pick-ups, you could chew away a lot of time texting them all day.

And I guess people are on Twtitter a lot too.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

I kind of hate talking about this, always worry that as soon as I say something it will turn sour and go bad…

But here goes…

I have honestly not seen any major loss in traffic, definitely nothing that causes me to worry. There has been a 10-15% loss on GayDemon, but Time On site is up and Bounce Rate is down… but more importantly sales are up considerably. I’m guessing that I dropped long-tail traffic or ranking on less relevant keywords but stronger on larger more relevant words. It’s difficult to be sure though because I split the site up in two in January; normal and mobile.

BestMaleBlogs.com is bumping along pretty much unchanged, if anything maybe some growth. It did have some weird losses of traffic for a short time when Panda hit (early this year). The blog host BestMaleDiaries.com is steadily growing but I’m unsure if the site and the indirect incoming links are worth it or not… often feels like a lot of hassle and cost for very little.

The tube sites are another story. BestMaleVideos.com has really taken off and gone from nothing to a very large amount of visitors in a relatively short time. It’s overtaken my older tube site QueerPixels.com by quite a large margin. Interestingly with BestMaleVideos.com I’ve never enganged in a single link exchange yet it’s had the most success.

QueerPixels.com have been steady for a long time - no real loss or gain. I think for it to grow it needs a new design and larger video player which I’ll plan to have in place by Christmas. The most recent tube site BostonBoyz.com is growing steadily which it never did while it was only a link list.

BUT… and it’s a big but… while tube traffic does sell it’s ratios are not as good as what I get out of GayDemon.com and the costs are far higher. Profit margins on Tubes are slim. In my case partly because I’ve outsourced management and editorial tasks to Canada (legal reasons) and the bandwidth at these large volumes gets expensive. To put it in perspective though, my tube sites only account for 25% of all sales but have the 3x more visitors.

I did close down several TGP’s this year, utterly pointless and sales on them are worse than Tube sites (except the TGP on GayDemon which does very well).

The big exception is GayPornEngine.com which is quite a static site and very SEO friendly / aggressively sculptured… on there I’ve lost probably 60% of all traffic if not more. I’m considering closing it or redoing it entirely. Really not much point to keep it as it is.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

I’d say so as well. People are glued to their cell phones. I had my 20 year old nieces and nephew here visiting and it’s like non-stop, glued to the cell. I had to institute a cell free zone around the supper table. :shocked:

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Yes but they are still likely to be using the internet just that’s it through a mobile device.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

I 100% agree about the Grindr thing, i believe this is a big factor.

People seem to be texting a lot more, too. If you’ve got a network of friends and past pick-ups, you could chew away a lot of time texting them all day.

I dont really think this is an issue for people not watching porn, people have been texting eachother non-stop since 1995ish, things like grindr above have only been around for a short period

And I guess people are on Twitter a lot too.

This is interesting, i joined twitter in 2009, and never really used it. I was at a developer confrence the other weekend for TechCrunch (if anyone reads it) and everyone was swapping twitter addresses. Since then, i have started using it more, as i met some really interesting people. I now send about 40 tweets a day. Its getting quite addictive.

However, im more concerned about traffic i never had, i have a blog, that had conran write hand written posts daily, with good HQ images. I didn’t over SEO it, just kept it simple (descriptions, keywords, used tags, sensical titles etc) and its never broken 150> a day. I have tried everything. No matter what i do, it will just not happen. This is now 1 year+

Considering throwing in the towel, and setting up a tube on there.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

The problem with things like Twitter and Facebook is that they are self-contained systems and a way of communication… not a major force at driving traffic. It’s really got disappointing numbers despite how huge they are. I’ve said it before, it’s loads of people spitting out all kinds of pointless details about themselves and no one actually listening let alone clicking links. Still, they have their uses mainly incoming good quality links and link sharing/recommendation.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, games, texting back and forth all day long.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Also doesn’t help that Google now greatly values and ranks those corporate sites rather than blogs or websites ran by individuals or mom and pop operations.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Yeah those sites don’t really work for adult sites but for my mainstream websites social sites can drive large amounts of traffic quickly.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

I would give credibility to this. Since Google Panda, they’ve been wringing out “the middlemen” as much as possible. I can say that after many years, Google is finally associating products with their actual producers. BUT that is not so much the case for adult content.

When it comes to adult content Google’s results are overwhelmingly illegal file sharing sites, zero-content template-based tubes, duplicate content skinned theaters and file trading message boards.

Last week I received the new Bel Ami DVD with Mick Lovell on the cover. Driving in my car, my friend was drooling all over it, and I watched him do this: He pulled out his cell phone, searched in his android browser for “Mick Lovell” and in about 5 seconds he was watching a pirated video with Mick Lovell on myvidster. When I informed him that he was watching illegal material, he said this: “I didn’t do anything illegal. I just did a search.

And I think that’s most people’s natural reaction.

And that’s the problem right there, folks. Until there is some like of liability with someone hosting copyrighted content, or if a search engine is deemed culpable as racketeering, this is what we get - a world where people simply don’t understand how this activity is harmful. I’ve been eager to hear if any of the US ISP’s piracy tracking programs are doing anything.

In the meantime, I’m on the verge of abandoning FriskyFans. I don’t know if I unwittingly triggered a site penalty in Google, or if it’s Panda. I cannot figure it out. What I get now is a few measly trial purchases a month off Falcon/Hot House/Buddy Profits which never materialize into rebills, coupled with making chump change off AEBN (despite sending a new member a day!). Meanwhile I’m struggling to keep my electricity on, I haven’t had a vacation in years and I’m slowly getting increasingly jammed up with bills. This is a far different world compared to 5-6 years ago online.

I don’t know if it’s the economy. If’s it’s Google. If it’s pirates. If it’s these fucking no-money trials from my leads. My suspicion is that it’s probably an evil recipe combining all of it.

Steve

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

I think Steve hit the nail on the head, since Panda it seems every time I search for anything media-related, the first 5 links are to filestube or torrent sites for free downloads. Google is what is killing traffic!

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Yeah and so who’s going start a class action lawsuit?

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Has anyone also considered that Google has a separate blog search?

Just as they primarily offer videos under a video search, and images under an image search, they created a ghetto specifically for a blog search that they haven’t really promoted. They basically shoved us all into a back alley.

If I search for something I know I rank well in, I appear in the top of that blog search, and maybe page two on the main search results.

In my opinion, Google found that far too many blogs were appearing, and they created the blog search to dump them all in. I suspect that they’ll do the same eventually when they notice that tubes are saturating the search results too.

I also agree that Google is another corporate monster making selfish decisions to support their own profits. The idea that they would be moral or fair is completely destroyed by the fact that they have been caught out stealing user data, monitoring private networks and basically spying illegally on people for their own gain.

Anyone who thinks that Google is somehow more noble than the average corporation after they were caught red handed invading private networks need to see a therapist of some kind - they’re delusional.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Aaron Walls posts at seobook.com/blog are very illuminating to where Google is really going with its results. Worth some time to go through the archives there.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Since I’ve started this, indulge me to continue part two of my current “Observations on Google for the Month

If you guys read through their Webmaster Tools blog and all the stuff they talk about, and all of the specific items they incorporate into every Panda update, you’ll see that they are doing a lot. Now,. maybe they are doing a great job. I’m not a Google engineer. However I do know from my dusty old books on math and economics that it’s easy for operators to mess up the outcome of a system, if they attempt to do too many things, if they try to make too many adjustments.

I read through these Panda updates and look at the search results and it occurs to me that Google is attempting to do way too many things with their results. There’s always going to be a law of diminishing returns. It’s like they are preparing a big pot of soup, and they are in the middle of making it, but it doesn’t taste right. And they do not want to just start over from the beginning, so they keep adding bits of this and dashes of that, more and more corrections.

So who knows - when it comes to searching for adult content, I think Google at the moment is simply broken. The upside to that is that it won’t be this way forever. Glass half full, right?

Steve

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

Yeah isn’t that true…too many cooks spoiling the soup scenario. And which may end up as a house of cards, well simply like a computer software.

Re: Where is the traffic shifting to?

[QUOTE=conran;119161]Has anyone also considered that Google has a separate blog search?

Just as they primarily offer videos under a video search, [/QUOTE]

They shut down Google Blog Search a while ago, and they’re in the process of shutting down Google Video. Every time I login to YouTube it asks me if I want to move my videos from Google Video to YouTube before GV closes down.