Orleans Hub sees big surge in traffic past 2 weeks
Photo by Tom Rivers: The sign on Route 31 in Albion proclaims that Albion Central School is closed until further notice. The five school districts in Orleans County announced on March 14 they would be closed. Districts continue to offer meals to students and have sent home school work and are doing some distance learning.
Orleans Hub is seeing a big increase in traffic the past two weeks with the public anxious for updates about the coronavirus and its impact on the community.
The Orleans Hub’s traffic with pageviews and daily unique visitors is up about 50 percent in the past two weeks, compared to the averages for 2019.
Since March 12, the average daily pageviews is 39,002, compared to 26,035 for 2019, a 49.8 percent increase. (The pageviews in 2019, at 9,556,253 for the entire year, were up 13 percent from the number in 2018.)
Since March 12, our average daily unique visitors is 12,851, up from the 8,475 daily average in 2019 – a 51.6 percent increase.
We’ve steadily been growing since the Orleans Hub debuted nearly seven years ago on April 2, 2013. But I thought we had near saturation and couldn’t grow much more.
I’ve told people the only way we could see big growth in traffic is for something really bad to happen. I wasn’t rooting for a calamity, but the coronavirus has had a drastic impact on the community, shutting schools, churches and businesses indefinitely.
So far we have three of the confirmed cases of the virus out of about 30,000 cases in the state.
I’m hoping we can get back to normal soon.
Like many of the news sites in the country, the spike in traffic comes at a time when advertising will likely decline because businesses have been temporarily closed down and are in limbo. Orleans Hub relies on our small business neighbors for critical advertising revenue.
The Orleans Hub has already lost some of our advertising revenue with so many events being cancelled.
We would welcome new advertisers and financial contributions from the readers. We don’t charge subscriptions to access the news and we don’t make readers complete surveys before they can check out what’s going on in the community.
If you are interesting in donating, we have options online (click here) or you can mail a check to Orleans Hub at 170 North Main St., Albion NY 14411.
