Traffic review of the year
Posted by Huw,
Just before Christmas I like to take a look at website traffic and other figures for the year and compare them with previous periods.
This year page views and visitor numbers are down again but our Alexa and Quantcast rankings, which compare us with all sites on the Internet, have improved.
The headlines are:
- Page views down by 9%, visits down by 8%, visitors down by 11%
- Alexa rank 13,010 up from 15,075 at the end of 2017
- Quantcast US rank is currently 2,568: a huge rise fom 9,136 at the end of 2017
- 25,000 new members joined in 2018, about the same as in 2017
- 63,600 members logged in during 2018. 3867 of you posted 34,050 comments on our news articles and reviews
- Social media followers up by around 20%, mostly on Instagram.
Website traffic
Here's how this year compares with the previous six:
| 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page views | 84,910,676 | 92,611,909 | 101,385,839 | 94,879,418 | 85,658,634 | 78,595,421 | 58,871,313 |
| Visits | 23,334,774 | 25,174,751 | 26,414,965 | 24,309,642 | 20,761,051 | 19,810,668 | 15,656,887 |
| Visitors | 6,446,014 | 7,268,174 | 7,431,089 | 7,242,884 | 6,624,114 | 6,187,944 | 4,980,424 |
Figures for all three metrics have dropped again this year, after their peak in 2016. However, Alexa and Quantcast rankings have actually improved, so I'm not quite sure what to conclude from that.
It may be partly due to the increase in advertisements shown to non-members but it could also be due to popular culture having passed 'peak LEGO', in the wake of the first LEGO Movie.
The following chart shows how we compare with our competitors, as ranked by Alexa. It's currently showing that, as was the case last year, Brickset is the third most visited LEGO-related site. LEGO.com (not on the graph) is ranked ~2,800 (2017:2,300), BrickLink ~10,000 (2017:14,000) and Brickset ~13,000 (2017:15,000). All other LEGO sites are an order of magnitude lower. You can click to enlarge it.
Social media and membership numbers
Our social media followers have increased again this year: Facebook 30,700 likes (2017: 29,000), Twitter 29,700 (2017: 26,100) and Instagram 31,000 (2017: 17,300)
On the website, member numbers are rising still, up from 175,000 to almost 200,000, an increase of 14%. That's an average of about 480 new members a week. The forum now has 21,000 members, 1,500 more than last year.
Conclusions
Despite another drop in visitor numbers Brickset is still the third most visited LEGO site with no real competitors and we will continue to enhance it and innovate to ensure it remains that way.
Thank you all for visiting and making the site the success it is. I hope we can continue to meet your LEGO-information needs and if you have any suggestions as to what you'd like us to do differently, we are always open to hearing them, either in the comments below or via the contact form at the bottom of the page.
Happy Holidays to you all!
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28 comments on this article
Thank you, Brickset, specifically for the Random Sets of the Day. It's a joy, every day, to check the site and see what madcap interesting conversation is going on in Huwbot's selection of the day. I have enjoyed those so much.
Thank you Huw for your hard work and thanks to everyone who contributes to make Brickset the great site it is.
I find Brickset offers a fantastic balance of news, reviews and nostalgia just on the front page. As great a job the staff do in their content, one of the things that keeps me coming back is the comments on these articles, and reading the discussion they generate. Thanks and Merry Christmas everyone!
It looks like the traffic on Brickset is directly related to Lego's global sales in the Western Hemisphere.
Thank you for all the fantastic work. Brickset is certainly the best Lego-based website. I agree with @kinggregus that the fall in page views surely reflects more the global trend with Lego than the quality of the site itself.
As a web developer and AFOL, Brickset is really an amazing piece of work combining two of my biggest passions. It's great articles like this which keep me coming back everyday. Keep up the great work!
Firstly Thankyou to you and the team The site is excellent, I visit multiple times every day, my most clicked is purely Shopping, Best Discounts for my wanted, then "NEW" anything spy photo or detail about new sets... around this time of year its "2019" to see what's coming. Finally Reviews... of sets I have but haven't opened or am on the fence over. One thing I was only thinking about asking this am would be..... When searching for UK (and I assume the same for everyone else) Discounts rather than having a Specific Vendor drill down..... could we have a tickbox. I try to avoid Bricklink (Which is great in its own right) as my hopes are up when I see the price on the page only to then click on it and find it has no minifigs or £5 postage. The same applies to Amazon Marketplace..... (if that could be separate to Amazon ?) great prices often spoiled by postage. Thankyou
And just to mention how incredibly useful the parts info is, to be able to find a part I own, in an unopened set for some kind of Moc or new set mock up, and being able to see which sets it appears in and even which other colours are available. And of course the very nature of the "database" being able to go back in time and look for sets I had years ago or even sets I didn't know existed from around the world. Thankyou again.
thanks for another enjoyable and informative year
Thank you for providing us with such an amazing website — keeping us up to date with new products and allowing us to keep track of our collections (among others). Keep up the good work!
Thanks for all your work, Huw. Brickset is an essential resource for Lego!
Fantastic site my good man! Bravo! Encore!
Thanks for doing what you do.
I would imagine some folks just like a wee bite of news and therefore twitter or instagram are more their thing. They either just want a blurb or an image and thats all they really take time for not reading a full article.
Thank you for providing this great site and tool for all to use. I check in daily to see the goings on in the Lego world. As others have said, I love the random set of the day, as well as the reviews and news articles all listed on the main page. It makes it easy to keep up with all that is going on. I certainly appreciate the depth of the tools as well, being able to track my collection of sets, parts, and minifigs. I hope the site and community is around for a long time. Thank you to all behind the scenes for all your hard work. I hope all the Brickset staff and community have a Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
Thanks for making Lego's textures available to the world. Great insights, splendid articles and photos, and lots of news for everyone. I find your articles very balanced: keep up the good work.
And Season's Greetings to staff and members alike!
I love your site! I am a daily visitor to see what’s new! While I do view other LEGO-related sites, yours is the only LEGO site, other than LEGO.com, that I am a registered visitor of, as well.
Based on my experience, views are down for the two you indicated: 1) LEGO, as a brand (as a category) has peaked and 2) We are in a post Web world, so the fall-off is also due to more users turning to social networks & messengers.
Thanks for all that you do! Keep up the great work.
Thank you very much!
I came back to Lego in 2015 or 2016, after a couple of decades worth of "dark ages".
This site helped me keep track of what I had when I was a child, and to determine what direction to take my renewed interest.
As with me, and most likely all of us, this is a MOC-in-progress. :)
I'm looking forward to what comes with the new year in all respects.
Great site, I visit you every day - keep up the good work.
My go to Lego site for everything LEGO. Great reviews, excellent updates and interesting comments/viewpoints from members. Keep up the outstanding work!
My huge thanks to all the hard working people at Brickset Towers!
Thank you for all the reviews, features, articles and everything that goes into making Brickset a success.
Yep yep. I don't necessarily always login and/or comment, but I do check in here everyday. At least weekdays while at the office. During the weekend I'm usually too drunk to use a computer.
Thanks so much to everyone at the Brickset team! I’m on the site almost daily, and really appreciate all your work!
Thanks for bring us this great website. The new function of part tab is really useful!
I'll always be visiting, everyday. Not a day goes by without thinking "which random set we're gonna see tomorrow". And also, as an AFOL, I can't stop checking up older sets with Bricksets marvelous search engine. It gives me great ideas to build oldschool MOC's. So, thank you very much.
Your site is the best ! Keep up the good work :-)
I think partly that a lack of interesting theme for the majority of this year that attention grabs (Lego Batman for instance), and the over abundance of Brickheads has probably cost views.
I know myself I tend to skip the brickheads reviews as they just don't interest me.
Only other thing is I wish we could get earlier news on sets or more leaks, but I know the legal position on that so its not really possible, but that's the only thing that'd improve the site for me.
Well, the decline in traffic certainly isn't thanks to me- in the past year I've gone from 0 sets to over 200, and Brickset has become my most-visited website. Thanks so much for providing a great service!
So, I've recently had the opportunity to search for SW Clone Wars sets on my phone. I lazy typed set number (sometimes name) and the word lego into the search box. For the vast quantity of my searches, do you know were the Brickset page was? Most often it was towards the bottom, or even on the second page. This was disheartening to me. Amazon links, ebay links, brickpicker, something called lego.wiki.com and others were higher. I wonder how well the thing that search engines use is working here (just googled - search engine optimization) I'm assuming Amazon has massive dollars (pounds, euros, yen, zloty) to throw at searches, but Huw can't be that far behind Bezos. Anyway, I wonder if that is part of it, not simply past peek LEGO. Because c'mon, Brickset is by far the best LEGO related news/set site I've encountered.