Snopes.com, we’ve all used it (or been referred to it by level headed friends) to debunk urban myths, but how much traffic does the site receive? The answer is – more last week than at any time in the past 15 months.
I noticed the website among my fast movers report and having long used the site, thought it high time I look at the data. Last week, the site ranked 270 among All Categories of websites based on share of US Internet visits, up from 441 the week before. The site’s market share of visits jumped 60%. Clickstream data reveals that the increase came from email, with visits from Email Services accounting for 46% of the site’s traffic, up from 29% the week before.

But what was the mail furore about? It wasn’t simply the weekly newsletter, because we’d see the spike every week. A bit of digging reveals that the peak in visits occurred Friday and Saturday. Searches on the website and in the blogosphere reveal that the hot topic those days was a post about The Golden Compass, a film based on the Philip Pullman trilogy.
Looking at Hitwise Demographic data, I noticed a significant change in the share of traffic to Snopes.com from a few states. In particular, there was a 16% increase in the share of Internet visits from Alabama, 25% from Arkansas, 25% from Oklahoma, 18% from Utah, and 15% from both Texas and Kentucky.
Interesting data no doubt, but what’s the practical application? In this case the data could be used to make decisions about the film’s distribution – avoiding states where controversy will be greatest for the initial release. Similar data would no doubt be useful to politicians and lobbyists trying to identify hotspots for particular issues.