Christmas time on the Internet
Christmas was a time when the Internet was used less frequently. On Christmas Eve, the number of Internet users dropped by 3% compared to previous Sundays, and on Christmas Day by 4% compared to previous Mondays. As a rule, web traffic is always lower on holidays than on weekdays. In this case, however, the week of 25-31.12 saw an average of 1.4% fewer Internet users per day than in the weeks of 27.11-17.12.
As for the individual categories of services, the biggest declines in the number of users were recorded by Education, down 38.1%, and Jobs, down 24%. The number of users of services and applications from the Weather category also dropped - by 23.5%.
On the other hand, certain types of sites attracted more users than usual. The Saturday before Christmas Eve was a triumph for the Kitchen, cooking category - it recorded 61.4% more users than on the other Saturdays in December. Traffic in the Theology and Religion category also grew throughout the holiday week. On Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve we could see increases in the number of users of the Streaming audio category - on Christmas Eve they were probably listening to Christmas carols, on New Year's Eve to dance music.
Of the large categories, VOD and OTT Services recorded 11.5% more users with a record 3.88 million users on the second day of Christmas. The category Senniki, horoscopes, magic recorded record growth during the holiday week, up 21.1%. However, this is a small category - it had 253,000 users on the record first day of the new year. Slow days (or slower pace of work) also translated into a 12.3% increase in the category Gossip, life of celebrities. The December record (more than 5 million users) was set in this category on Saturday, December 30, probably due to preparations for TV New Year's Eve. The category also triumphed on New Year's Day, when it was visited by 5.81 million Internet users.
The first week of January, in addition to the upturn in news categories and the aforementioned gossip, brought increases in the Travel and Tourism (a daily average of 25.9% more than in the weeks of 27.11-17.12), Construction and Real Estate (+25.8%) and Weather Services (+10.9%) categories. This means that the time for planning vacations and vacations or spring renovations and daily commutes to work and school has already begun.
In the types of sites that lose the most users during the holidays, at the same time the most engaged users remain - increases in average time per user can be observed. Such a trend occurred in the categories Business, finance, law, Information and journalism - general, Automotive or Construction and real estate. At the same time, time per user also increased in categories gaining users during the holidays - such as VOD and OTT sites (up 12.7%), Games and gaming sites (up 11.8%) and Gossip, celebrity life (up 7.2%). Due to more free time, Internet users were able to devote more of it to their favorite activities.
