Here’s one really interesting trend I dug from the stats log Pinoy Top Blogs — an hourly trend of internet traffic for blogs. Although, I’m only basing these figures from the said site which tracks close to 3,000 Filipino blogs, I’m sure we can derive something useful from this.
Here are the numbers and the charts:
Highest traffic for a given month was March 2007 at 8,499,495 page views from 1,464,829 unique visitors. The month with the highest number of unique visitors was May at 1,538,765 but it generated less page views (8,026,274) than March. Remember, these pageviews and visits are the aggregate number for all those who are using the tracking button (approved, pending, and suspended). This also includes traffic directly generated by the site but that is negligible considering the Pinoy Top Blogs site barely hit 1,000 pageviews a day.
The traffic was also plotted on an hourly basis and this is how it looks like:
Based on the graph, you can see that blog traffic tops at 11AM (just before lunch), dips at 12 noon (lunch break) and goes back between 1PM to 2PM. This might indicate blog reading habits peaks and hour before and after lunch (probably mostly due office workers accessing blogs from work?).
On the other hand, the lowest traffic hours are between 4 to 6 AM.
In any case, this chart tells us to publish our posts just before noon to take advantage of the traffic trends.
One plausible cause that I can see here is because most high school/college students also have most of their classes in the morning, which explains why there’s less Internet traffic. When I was still in college, I’ve noticed that the best time to rent a computer in an Internet cafe is in the morning, where most of the shops are virtually empty. (That is, if there are open Internet cafes as early as 7.)
For the most part, some of us may even be stuck in real-life road traffic in the morning
however in my blog’s case, the stats is not really accurate because there are times that the button of the PinoyTopBlogs hadn’t downloaded especially if the Adbrite ads in my blog experienced problems.
Did I miss something Abe? The time zone? I guess I should assume this chart is Philippine Standard Time … GMT +8?
On my blogs, which have mostly US, European and Australian readers, in the order, my two peak times are:
0900 GMT 5:00 AM NYC 5:00 PM MNL 7:00 PM Sydney
2100 GMT 5:00 PM NYC 5:00 Am MNL 7:00 AM Sydney
Those who are “courting” international readers might like to try setting their blog on GMT and using the really neat “Meeting Planner” tool on http://www.timeanddate.com to plan their best posting times as if they were “meeting” with their readers. I have no idea how scientific this is, but it makes me feel as if I’m planning somehting anyway
Twitter: jaypee
says:
If most of my readers are from the Philippines that means I’ll have to publish my posts at midnight. Hehe
@Dave – cool tool! Thanks for sharing.
abe, thanks so much for this. I think I had an idea that Philippine-based readers for my blog, Filipina Soul, read the blog when I’m asleep, but it helps to narrow down those hours to right before midnight USA time.
[...] YugaTech answered that for me! Abe Olandres tracked the stats logs of over 3,000 Filipino blogs listed in Pinoy Top Blogs. [...]
@ Dave, all times are GMT +8 based on server logs.
@ Grace, welcome.
I’ll just do a scheduled post every 4 hours. kidding..
if that was the case. jaypee is correct we should be posting at 12 midnight.
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Twitter: latestnewsph
says:
someone did not get the idea if you post at 12 midnight.
i think the best time is before lunch.