Traffic page update: see your subreddit's traffic split by platform

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/954a8p/traffic_page_update_see_your_subreddits_traffic/

created by Drunken_Economist on 06/08/2018 at 19:21 UTC*

377 upvotes, 65 top-level comments (showing 25)

Hey Mods!

It’s your friendly neighborhood data scientist, back with another post about traffic pages. When I posted about a back-end update to the pages last month[1], I had also asked for a bit of feedback and ideas for what additional features moderators would find useful when we’re building those traffic pages in the redesign. Overwhelmingly, the most requested feature was the ability to have insight to their subreddit’s usage broken down by platform. Moderators wanted to be able to get insight on where to best direct their efforts at community building and customization (e.g. the structured style header image is visible on Reddit Apps and the redesign, but not mobile web or old reddit).

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/8uy4xo/an_update_to_increase_the_accuracy_of_subreddit/

Since this request was so popular, we decided to take the time to update the traffic pages on the legacy site before the redesign so every mod has it as well. So, beginning today, we’re rolling out an update to create stacked area charts on traffics pages, splitting out pageviews and uniques by platform.

r/redesign's traffic page, for example

Thanks so much to u/redtaboo, u/keysersosa, u/d3fect, u/jkohhey and u/shrink_and_an_arch for help getting this together! And as always, I'll stick around in the comments to ~~shitpost~~ answer questions

*Edit:** someday I'll get to make a post about a feature with no bugs, but today is not that day. Looks like the change accidentally ended up doubling all the values in the tables when totaling them up[2]. Sorry about that, stand by for a fix in the morning!

2: https://www.reddit.com/r/shittychangelog/comments/95dxc5/reddit_change_we_found_a_way_to_improve_total/

*Edit2:** u/d3fect found the table issue and fixed it :)

Comments

Comment by Subduction at 06/08/2018 at 19:29 UTC

81 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Thanks very much -- I'm not seeing it yet, but I assume it's a roll-out.

Can we get thirteen months of reporting rather than just twelve? It would be nice to be able to compare year-over-year by period.

Comment by Tornado9797 at 06/08/2018 at 19:29 UTC

17 upvotes, 2 direct replies

That's pretty helpful, thanks!

Do you think it would be possible to implement subreddit mentions in the traffic page as well?

Comment by ShaneH7646 at 06/08/2018 at 19:33 UTC

25 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Unmentioned addition: subscription graph now show unsubscriptions

Comment by crownofnails at 06/08/2018 at 20:15 UTC

12 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Thanks for the update!

Do you have other insights updates planned for the future? Something we've been wanting for a while on /r/pokemontrades is wiki traffic stats – we make heavy use of our wiki, and having those stats would help us improve our content and how we direct users to the info they need.

Comment by Deimorz at 06/08/2018 at 19:30 UTC

22 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Is traffic from third-party mobile apps included in "Reddit Apps", or only the official ones?

Comment by jkohhey at 09/08/2018 at 01:29 UTC

1 upvotes, 3 direct replies

All subs should be seeing the traffic pages update now[1].

1: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GloomyDeepChevrotain-size_restricted.gif

Comment by EditingAndLayout at 06/08/2018 at 19:29 UTC

10 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Hey, this is pretty sweet. Thanks for making this available on original reddit as well.

Comment by pat_trick at 06/08/2018 at 20:36 UTC*

7 upvotes, 0 direct replies

On the mouse-overs, it centers the numbers at the edge of the bar as follows:

https://i.imgur.com/tE4whQ2.jpg

It would be easier to use if you put the mouse over on the center of each bar instead of the edges.

It's also not clear if the bar represents the month on the axis before the vertical line or after it.

EDIT: It would also be cool to be able to pull up historically significant traffic spikes. For example, we had a huge traffic spike for our sub in January, the most we've ever seen. However, I can't pull up any daily data from that time period. Maybe a "Top 3 most active months"?

EDIT 2: Was about to write about the values doubling, but it looks like you folks are aware!

Comment by John_Yuki at 06/08/2018 at 19:36 UTC*

18 upvotes, 3 direct replies

Suggestions:

All-time traffic records. I currently have a bot that does this for /r/footballmanagergames, but I really feel like it should be something incredibly simple for you guys to do on your end and show in a little box of it's own on the traffic page.

Use line graphs instead of bar charts. I feel like line graphs would look a helluva lot better than bar charts for displaying a value/date combination. I made this chart[1] in Google Sheets to give an example of how I think it could look. It looks much cleaner imo than the screenshot you showed. Not to mention your bar charts are wonky[2]. It would also allow you to display information over a longer period of time more beautifully, as you could just include in a side-scroll bar for people to use to go forward/backwards in time on the graph.

1: https://i.imgur.com/kafXaYD.png

2: https://i.imgur.com/ydBiAtL.png

Comment by bobcobble at 06/08/2018 at 19:23 UTC

15 upvotes, 2 direct replies

Nice, thanks! Will we ever be able to make traffic pages public again?

Comment by creesch at 06/08/2018 at 19:29 UTC

13 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Awesome!! How long does it typically take for such a feature to be rolled out to all subs? I want to play with it :D

Edit:

Ooooh I already see the new graph styles that are already more shinierder than the old ones with hover things. No breakdown per platform though.

Comment by dysgraphical at 06/08/2018 at 19:43 UTC

7 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thank you for adding unsubscriptions alongside subscriptions!

Comment by cahaseler at 06/08/2018 at 19:30 UTC

7 upvotes, 1 direct replies

How do we turn this on?

Comment by nosecohn at 06/08/2018 at 19:54 UTC

6 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Thanks for this. It will be really useful.

Now that you're including unsubscribes in that stacked chart, I have a few questions...

Are unsubscribes counted in the total number of readers listed in a subreddit's sidebar? Does that number reflect all the unsubscribes throughout the history of the subreddit? Does it reflect subscribers who have deleted their accounts? I'm just trying to get a sense of how accurate the subscriber count there is.

Comment by electric_ionland at 06/08/2018 at 20:01 UTC

5 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Tanks! I don't know what is in the plans for the future but would be great to be able to select a time period and have the stats over that range.

Comment by Tentacle_Schoolgirl at 06/08/2018 at 20:18 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thank you Admins, very cool!

Comment by likeafox at 06/08/2018 at 19:32 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thanks D_E. Very cool!

Comment by V2Blast at 06/08/2018 at 19:39 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thanks for this!

Comment by meoka2368 at 06/08/2018 at 19:43 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I have r/meoka2368 just so no one else could get it. It shows that there's 6 users there now (within the last 15 minutes) but all the traffic reports are blank.

Are the "users here now" numbers fuzzy, like up/down vote numbers?

Comment by DM2602 at 06/08/2018 at 19:54 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Thank you very much, this is so useful so we can have a better insight in what direction (speaking of platforms) we have to develope our communities.

Looking forward to it!

Comment by thoughtcrimeo at 06/08/2018 at 22:05 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I'm not seeing this on any of my subs.

Comment by SometimesY at 06/08/2018 at 22:34 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Hey DE, wanted to ask something. /r/CFB's subscriptions fell off of a cliff the last few days. Is this legitimate? It seems a bit odd that we hit nearly 2000 new subscribers one day, then dropped to ~400 which is half of our average the last several months.

Comment by [deleted] at 07/08/2018 at 08:18 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

It looks good and I love this so far, only thing I've noticed is this weird edge sticking out on one chart on The_Mueller: https://imgur.com/zkZEOLq.png

Comment by Conducteur at 07/08/2018 at 10:29 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Would it be possible to include the unsubscriber numbers, and perhaps the traffic split by platform, in the table at the bottom? I like to copy the data into an Excel sheet to see long term trends, and copy-pasting some text is a lot easier than manually writing down the values from the interactive graph.

Comment by lightmystic at 08/08/2018 at 23:58 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I just noticed this update go live on my subreddit traffic and just came to find this post and tell you guys...I love you.

This is such a fantastic update, especially due to the fact I can cater to the larger audiences, better, for my subreddits.