Lindsay Lohan is Good for Your Website's Traffic

[Note: Alexa's traffic data are still delayed by about a week, so this post is a bit stale.]

Today's Movers graph pretty much tells a short story about how if you're a scandal-plagued starlet recovering from substance abuse, and you pose as an American icon from the past, the site that posts your photos will get a lot of traffic.

You're free to view the photos, but be warned; they are NSFW--or fans of Marilyn Monroe.

Freshness of Traffic Data

As some of you have noticed, our traffic data is a few days behind. We are working hard to catch up, and you will see new data appearing over the next several days.

Thank you for your patience!

Firefox Continues to Impress

[Note: due to some technical difficulties, the Movers data have not been updated since Friday the 15th. Rather than hold them frozen at those posted Tuesday the 12th of February, I'm updating them to the last available, reliable Movers data.]

You look at the graph and you see Mozilla. Your brain says, "Yeah, I just updated Firefox."

I'm always impressed by how much of a surge in traffic the already-popular mozilla.com gets when they put out a Firefox update. A great trickle-down effect is that in subsequent days, popular Firefox plugins get a boost as their home-sites release updates to coincide with the new Firefox revision. The number ten Mover in this list, Mincus.com's Adsense Notifier Plugin falls into this category.

Firefox Updates Reliably Increase Mozilla Traffic

When I look at the current graph of the Movers and Shakers, I have three thoughts.

1) Oh right, I did just recently have a Firefox update.

2) Man, that Warcraft III Defense of the Ancients game is really popular. [note: I'm not a gamer and initially confused World of Warcraft with Warcraft III. A kind commenter named Ryan pointed out my mistake and I have corrected this item. Thank you, Ryan.]

3) That Edison Chen scandal really does equal traffic.

Scandal = Traffic

When you look at the graph of our Movers and Shakers, the most striking increase among the top three is from the Mover in the number-two position, NoScript. This Firefox add-on is already popular; it has a three-month Traffic Rank of 3,799.

While the recent release of a new version of NoScript has certainly given the site's traffic a boost, it's already popular enough overall so the boost is not surprising or unprecedented. Even though it's the most vertical line on the Movers graph of the top three, it still comes in second to the top Mover, CLOT. This site doesn't usually get nearly as much traffic as NoScript, but suddenly had a huge increase in traffic, which makes the spike more significant.



There's a reason for the spike in traffic to CLOT: Scandal. CLOT is the website of an "urban lifestyle" company owned by Hong Kong movie star Edison Chen. Some illicit photos allegedly depicting Chen and various Hong Kong starlets surfaced recently, and Chen's side of the story is on his blog, hosted on the CLOT website. Suddenly, CLOT's Traffic Rank jumped from around 27,000 into the four thousands.


The third most significant Mover is Hampton Roads, the site of a Virginia news organization. Most of the increase in Alexa traffic for that site has been about another scandal: Virginia Beach police seized a large photograph from an Abercrombie and Fitch store because it was deemed obscene. Scandal equals traffic.

Of the ten Movers currently on our website, three are popular because of the Super Bowl. Two are popular because they deal with the Web and computers. The other five are the two scandal-related sites discussed above and three other celebrity gossip sites owing their increased Reach to Britney Spears and the Chen controversy. Oscar Wilde once remarked, "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." If you're looking for a spike in Internet traffic, this is the case.

Alexa Data Updates

As some of you have noticed, we temporarily stopped updating Alexa traffic information on January 31. We discovered some anomalies in the traffic rankings, including some inexplicable drops in traffic for a number of sites in China. We decided to halt the traffic updates until we resolved the issue. We expect to correct the problems later this evening.

Thank you for your patience!