Does Post Timing Matter?

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

When trying to increase traffic to ones blog, does the day/time on which a blog entry is posted matter? I tried an experiment in order to determine this, but the results so far are inconclusive. In the experiment, two blog posts contained links to the Huffington Post, and Gizmodo, two of the highest-ranked blogs on Technorati.  These links within the posts cause them to be listed as "blog reactions" on the Technorati listings for the Huffington Post and Gizmodo. The hypothesis was that more people would be likely to see these posts on weekdays, as opposed to weekends. This would be due to more people reading on weekdays relative to the number of people posting "blog reactions."

It has now been approximately four hours since the last post was made, and the post has dropped to page 12 and 10, respectively on both "blog reaction" lists. Therefore, it is unlikely that anyone will still find them via the "blog reaction" listings. The number of visitors per day are:

• Saturday: 0 visitors
• Monday: 1 visitor

This suggests that the hypothesis may be correct. However, a single visit is not enough to prove anything. It could just have been luck that somehone happened to be looking at the right time. What this does suggest, is that blogs such as the Huffington Post and Gizmodo, are linked to so often, that "blog reactions" listed for these blogs appear only briefly, before being buried under countless others. Another possibility is that very few people are likely to find posts from a particular blog via "blog reactions" on Technorati. Thus, linking to other blogs is unlikely to increase traffic by much. Nevertheless, many continue to cram links into their blog posts; there are even some posts that seem to be just links.

I will continue to keep an eye on inbound traffic as part of this experiment, but at this stage, I think that the results are unlikely to change.

Comments (1) | 15 July 2008