Analysing Steemit.com's Footprint on Search Engines. Traffic To Steem Follows Price of Steem Tokens. Tips & Thoughts Inside!
Today I have been analysing Steemit.com from various interesting angles - including the perspective of search engine traffic - who comes to Steemit.com from search engines and what are they searching for? Let's take a look at the answers!
Without having direct access to the traffic logs for Steemit.com, the best we can probably do when analysing the site's traffic is to use a commercially available SEO and traffic monitoring system - which is what I have used here (among other tools). There are so many pages visible via steemit.com and thus so many links incoming to the site that it is not a simple task to analyse the traffic, but as you will see, we can quickly learn some interesting things.
Observation 1: Traffic and Steem Value Closely Correlate
As you can see in the following graph - the historic price of Steem (listed on CoinMarketCap.com) very closely follows the estimated traffic levels shown by traffic monitoring software:
The yellow and green lines are the ones that show token value and market cap from CoinMarketCap.com and the red line shows the estimated traffic level for Steemit.com during the same period.
While the traffic clearly doesn't completely match up with the value of the token, there IS a significant connection between the two. My suggestion is that the higher the price goes, the more that people are inspired to come and post to attempt to take advantage of it. The increased posting results in increased traffic and the whole thing could produce a synergistic growth effect.
There also appears to be a slightly delayed opposite trend, where once the price drops, the traffic drops shortly after.
This appears to reinforce my previous statement that the future growth of Steem requires an increase in the social networking success of the platform.
Observation 2: Steemit ranks in search engines highly for many topics - but particularly for 'fringe' topics!
After the keyphrase 'steem it', the second most highly searched keyphrase that Steemit.com ranks for is... dun dunn dahhh..
weed prices
Yes, it turns out that Steemit is a mecca for those wanting to know how much weed costs! I had no idea!
Other fascinating facts include that Steemit ranks #1 for several 'pizzagate' keyphrases such as:
- tony podesta art
- james alefantis instagram
- podesta art
- jimmycomet
and more.
Other big 'conspiracy' topics also rank highly for Steemit, including the Las Vegas shooting incident with Stephen Paddock.
A variety of amusing kephrases that also attract a fair bit of search traffic are also top ranked #1 for steemit.com:
- how to steal from walmart
- massage parlor stories
- penis emoticon
- muslim incest
- paid trolls
- does insurance cover snake bites
- how to make a pact with the devil
- devil blessings
What kind of site would you guess Steemit was if you knew nothing about it other than that it rates #1 for these keywords?!
To be fair, there are numerous other keywords/phrases for which Steemit ranks highly, but these ones are near the top in terms of search volume.
I'm not in America, but I am guessing that some might conclude that Steemit is popular with hillbilly devil worshippers.. Is that a fair assessment? :)
Conclusions
I will not make many conclusions from these observations, since we really need to go much deeper to find useful answers to specifically useful questions. I may do this in future posts as I dig deeper into the data.
What I will say is that it is clear to me that the value of the token currently heavily relates to the traffic on Steemit.com and thus is likely to heavily relate to the interest in the social interactions on the Steem blockchain. There is no need for traders or speculators to use Steemit.com to any significant level, so I don't think we can explain the correlation of traffic to steem token value simply by saying that people are logging in to transact with Steem.
Given this is the case, it seems to make sense that using Steem as a platform for content that attracts traffic from the rest of the web is a solid strategy for increasing the value of Steem. This might seem obvious, but it is good to have some data to maybe back it up. It also appears that the uncensored nature of Steem makes it a destination for those who seek information that is not mainstream friendly - so maybe those who seek to have success on Steemit can benefit from stepping outside of their comfort zones for a while to find out if the world outside of mainstream logic is one that might serve them better for a while!
At the very least we can be sure that posts about weed prices will get some attention here!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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I have believed from the very beginning -- to boost steem we need external interaction. The value of the currency must be based on something -- in this case content. We need to work to attract external eyes to the content posted here.
I don't believe that we're exclusively a fringe content haven, but I would say that our mainstream content is often double posted. I mean, I post my highest quality work first here to test it out, and then on YouTube. My more 'fringe' content, and personal blog I post only here.
The "Notorious JB" had his problems, but he certainly evangelized Steem heavily. If as a community we could adopt his enthusiasm for advertising the platform it would do us good.
For my part, I have plans for externally advertising my content, using the distributed hosting of Steemit and DTube, but I am struggling to find the time to move forward. (My "real life" is getting in the road of these plans.)
I think that the more websites that are created which are based on Steem, but which are specialised (such as will occur as a result of SMTs), the more the steem blockchain will be able to be marketed to the more mainstream and also niche groups who otherwise wouldn't be looking here.
I am well used to being on 'the cutting edge' - it's just a question of whether the cut grows and stays or whether you yourself get cut! ;)
Lol. The weed prices and actually most of the other search terms came as a total surprise to me! At least now I know where to turn for info on all that stuff! ;)
Same here, totally mind blown :D A lot of surprises in this post.
Hehe.. let me know when weed prices are free again :)
I read this blog and gathered some knowledge abour steemit , thanks for your sharing sir
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I'm not surprised that fringe discussion is so popular here.
Like 4chan's /pol, this platform does not have a central authority giving us a by-their-leave to share our thoughts
And as a redneck ex-satanist who participates in a "fringe" community, #informationwar, I find that valuable beyond STEEM price.
A really wonderful diagram
But all prices are in a significant drop
great post @ura-soul, I'd love to run some of that data, nail down that hillbilly correlation..:)