Andy Coates Blog

All around the world people work and play at different times depending on many factors such as culture, climate and habit! The beauty of the web is that it never sleeps and is available 24/7 from nearly anywhere in the world. Thinking about this I decided to do a little research of my own based on my own (slowly) growing blog statistics. Since starting my blog I have used Counterize and have accumulated a reasonably good chart of hourly page views per day. The chart below shows the hourly page views for my blog since I started it in early may. You can see clearly that the time of day when there are the least page views is 6.00 GMT although that is still around half the maximum amount of page views at 16.00 GMT. Here I could assume that most people are asleep at 6.00 GMT but after reading the fantastic book Freakonomics I have learned with statistics nothing is always as it first appears.

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I know from Alexa information roughly what percentage of visitors from which countries visit my blog. I say roughly as Alexa doesn't sample data off every web user, only these with the Alexa toolbar installed. These are approximately my viewing percentages:

30% come form the United States
18% Come from the UK
15% Come from Canada
12% From Germany
3% from India
3% Australia
3% Singapore
3% Malaysia
14% Other

From here we can see that the US, UK, Canada and Germany has the largest percentage of viewing figures of my blog, so if we check what time it is in these other countries relative to 6.00 GMT we should maybe see a reason for the slump in page-views. Also if we take an average for the rest of the countries listed it works out about + 8 hours ahead of the UK.

UK: 06.00 GMT
US: -7 (Median)
Canada: - 8 (median)
Germany: +1
Rest of wold + 8

For the US and Canada because there is quite a large difference between the potential differences I have taken the median of the possible time difference.

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For the first comparison, I can safely say from living in the UK that 6.00 in the morning is probably the quietest time in general for everything, not just the Internet. At this time of day people in general will either be still tucked up in bed or getting ready to go to work. It is safe to assume that only a very small percentage of the population will be on-line at this time.

So for the second comparison, when it is 6.00GMT in the UK it will average 22.00 to 23.00 at night in the US and Canada. Obviously this is not bed time for everyone but a large amount of people will be going to sleep at this time ready for the following day, for this reason it is probably safe to assume that the slump in traffic from the US at 06.00 GMT is due to the fact that allot of people will be logging off and going to bed. The argument against that is not everyone goes to bed at this time but probably the majority do.

Again, thirdly Canada closely follows the US although it will be earlier in Canada at 06.00 GMT than it will be in the US but again we can safely assume that there are allot less people on-line at 22.00 that there is earlier in the day.

And once again, similar reasons can be given for Germany as i gave for the UK as the time difference is minimal between the UK and Germany.

*As for the rest of the world it was a trick one at first, although it is just an average for the rest of the world that is ALLOT of people overall even though it is just an average. Even if we go 4 hours either side of the average, +4 hours and +12 hours from 06.00 GMT this completely encapsulates the middle of the day for the rest of the world. I asked myself why there was such a massive slump in my page-views at 06.00 GMT when it was the middle of the day for morning and evening for Millions of people and prime time for Internet usage. I pondered this for a while and eventually came up with this answer, because my blog is written in English obviously if you don't speak English you have a very slim chance of reading it. I had assumed that about 50% of the world could speak English as a second or third language (please excuse my ignorance) that was until I done a quick search and found that it is probably only a maximum of 20% of the world population who can speak English. So now from that potential millions of Internet users who could be viewing my blog, it is probably closer to only 4% of that number not 20% as most English speaking countries have already been covered. So I'm assuming the reason for the slum at 06.00 GMT in my page-views for the rest of the world is because my blog only appeals to a tiny amount of people from that part of the world (thanks for taking the time to read my blog if English is not your first language, I have utter respect for anyone who speaks 2 or several languages, I wish as a child at school I was forced to learn 2 other languages along side English!) .

When is the best time to post my blog?

As stated earlier this is not an EXACT study only an informal look to see why there was a slump at 06.00 GMT in my blog page views. Finding out when was the least busiest time for Internet traffic and the reasons why would give a reference for the busiest time also giving a better insight when to post my blog. Overall we can assume that at 06.00 GMT and at the relative times this is a quiet time for Internet users to access and read *English written blogs. So for the answer to the original question when is the best time to post my blog?

So if 06.00 GMT is the quietest time it would make sense to post then when there are the least amount of potential blog users, i.e a new blog ready for the next peak of Internet use. BUT, and this is going to take a little research and testing to get a definite answer, if you submit your blog at 06.00 GMT and ping the servers to say "check me for new content", once Internet traffic begins to pick up again lots of other people will be doing the same and submitting their blog. This means that blog aggregators such as Technorati will have gotten your ping at 06.00 GMT but over the course of the morning your content will be getting lower down the list of freshness relative to the day, in theory. The alternate would be to submit your blog at peak time but then you will be competing against many other people using the internet who could be potentially doing the same. Again this could have a negative effect and within 10 minutes your new content flag could be 5 pages back in the upcoming news sections of blog aggregators!

This is a bit of a dilemma to busy and you new post may get lost, too quiet and there's not many people online to read you post before it gets lost in the daily blog influx. In theory, (and I'm going to try this starting with this post) the best time to post your blog will be just as the internet is becoming busy which, going from the above chart will be around 7.30 to 8.00 GMT just as the internet is waking up. This is all speculation and theory at the minute but i am going to aim to post each day at this time and add to this post with my findings so either book mark this post and keep checking back or i may add a button to the front page of my blog.