Similar Trends for Several Conspiracy Genre Websites

Looking at some traffic analysis on Alexa (they capture usage via "millions" of users having their toolbar installed, which is owned by Amazon) and found it quite odd of how similar the ups and downs are for three sites (including ATS) all of which I would consider to be in the same genre:




On the other hand, if you look at three big news sites, they are more flat line, and do not have any obvious correlation, such as the sites represented in the graph above:



Seems odd that this genre of sites are all having an almost identical trend...doesn't it?

I wonder what might make that correlation?

delius

That's pretty darn interesting right there.

If I had to guess, I would say the MSM outlets have a pretty homogenized and predictable content and audience, while the conspiracy sites are subject to input on a wide varety of topics from many sources including provocateurs and agents who like to whip everyone into a frenzy with InfoBombs.

I would be interested in seeing a correlation between big news stories from the 2008 campaign and those conspiracy sites during the same time period. Obama was named the Democratic nominee in June and there is no end to the outrageous claims being made about him on the web.

And lets not forget the kiddies are out of school, that's got to jack the numbers.

How about starting with the simplest hypotheses:
Here is my contribution.

1, People know that the mass media is deceptive.
2, They are concerned, or they would not bother, only strong concern generates action.
3, They see their world coming apart at the seams in new and unusual ways in the media.
4, The media does not link anything together into a coherant explaination.
5, The people begin to see interconnections and patterns beyond coincidence.
6, Search engines put every post out there instantly. The keywords converge into coherant responses for conspiracy sites.

This can only explain the up side of the chart. More troubling is the down side. The people have turned away from the mass media, and from conspiracy sites.

Have they found an answer elsewhere?

Or have they withdrawn from dealing with the threatening reality?

[edit on 20-6-2008 by Cyberbian]

I was trying to think of some major event that occured but that had minimal coverage by the MSM...Bilderberger meeting in Virginia! Voila! It's possible??? But other than that, I can't think of anything else that would generate so much interest all at once in these type of pages...

Cyberbian - I think the downturns at the end of the chart are the result of incomplete recent data and ultimately the move to 0,0. Though I have been known to make a mistake from time to time...

The conspiracy swell - I haven't the slightest idea. Perhaps it's like compounding interest and we've rounded the corner and the number of doubters/believers is naturally growing exponentially?

Maybe peak is connected with zeitgest movie? People who saw it searched the net for more info and thus rise in the activity of sites that discussed those issues previously.

reply to post by ZeroKnowledge


Interesting thought....

However, I'm assuming that if people were searching for Zeitgeist through these sites, they would have eventually found it. I ran the zeitgeistmovie.com against the three sites I posted about and I don't see anything obvious that correlates these.



delius

reply to post by delius


I was just looking at the graphs again, and noticed that on the axis to the left, the number decreases in value as you move from the bottom to up. I was wondering why that is? Can you explain what "rank" is? I mean, I would think it would increase, rather than decrease as you go up???

It's the rank of the website, e.g. the top is the #1 website, and everything goes down from there.

Alexa's definition:

`

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.

Source: www.alexa.com

delius