[tomerico]

Thanks for this site, I never knew Google publish analytic traffic and their estimated traffic.

Something interesting I have noticed, if you are looking at Hacker News' traffic data, there seems to be a steep decline somewhere around April [1]. I wonder what whether it is correct, and whether there was a fundamental change in this site / ycombinator around that time.

[1] https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en...

[raldi]

HN either doesn't use Google Analytics or didn't check the box to make their traffic numbers public. That's why the graph you link to has a dotted line, rather than a solid one. The accuracy is much less certain in their case.

[sc00ter]

(Sarcasm noted :-) For the uninitiated, this was around the time comment scores were hidden. Only PG knows whether this had any real effect on traffic; and even if so, whether that's a good or bad thing is subjective (less poor quality traffic / comments is good, and since HN is not directly commercial, lower traffic is not necessarily a bad thing).

Loss of value to everyone else from lack of comment scores is another question entirely...

[shinratdr]

If we have that much evidence that having no visible comment scores reduces poor quality traffic, I think I may have just switched sides in that particular debate.

I'm not saying that is the case, but it could be a very interesting revelation.