GameFAQs Site Traffic is asking "how many people visit the site these days"?
One way to judge that is by finding how many people vote in the Poll of the Day on an average day. According to stats compiled by Luster Soldier, these are the average PotD votals by year (NOT including any Contest matches that happened during that year).
| Year | Average | Percent Increase/Decrease
from Previous Year |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 4408 | |
| 2000 | 7062 | 60.21% |
| 2001 | 14019 | 98.51% |
| 2002 | 34435 | 145.63% |
| 2003 | 55397 | 60.87% |
| 2004 | 54598 | -1.44% |
| 2005 | 56643 | 3.75% |
| 2006 | 74644 | 31.78% |
| 2007 | 87908 | 17.77% |
| 2008 | 91112 | 3.64% |
| 2009 | 85797 | -5.83% |
| 2010 | 72588 | -15.40% |
| 2011 | 56882 | -21.64% |
| 2012 | 42981 | -24.44% |
| 2013 | 36506 | -15.06% |
| 2014 | 27323 | -25.15% |
| 2015 | 21162 | -22.55% |
| 2016 | 17492 | -17.34% |
| 2017 | 14282 | -18.35% |
| 2018 | 11360 | -20.46% |
| 2019 | 10464 | -7.89% |
| 2020 | 10483 | 0.18% |
| 2021 | 9471 | -9.65% |
| 2022 | 8362 | -11.71% |
| 2023 | 7655 | -8.45% |
If PotD vote totals weren't enough, the number of online users regularly using the boards at any given time has dropped off significantly since 2010. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of online users would regularly go over 7000 during the peak hours. After 2010, the number of online users has really dropped off. As of 2023, getting over 1500 online users is very uncommon, with 1000 to 1500 users online during the most active part of the day (8:00-11:00 PM EST).
Another way is to compare the number of unique visitors to GameFAQs versus other websites. Here's a graph from Alexa.com showing that trend:
As you can see, GameFAQs was the 125th most popular website on the internet at its peak in early 2008. As of late 2011, it has fallen out of the top 1000. Recently, GameFAQs has been hovering slightly above the 1000 mark, occasionally dropping below 1000.
Response from SBAllen himself[]
Alexa is one of the worst possible metrics that you can use to actually judge a website's traffic. It doesn't track mobile traffic at all and even regular traffic is mostly calculated using their Toolbar. Just trust me when I assure you that our traffic has gone up on a yearly basis. :)
Another thing that really fascinates me about the way the Internet works these days is that for the most part, people don't really go through a site's main page anymore like they used to. This is the Google Era. If you want something, you Google it, go to the result, and then go do something else. Our Google driven traffic's up nearly 1000% in the past 5 years, but as you can imagine a lot of people who hit us from Google get their answer and then move on. That's something I am already working on improving to keep more of those users, but it's not really detrimental to our overall traffic or anything as we have way more new users these days than we did back then as well. :)
The above messages were posted on 8/8/2012 in the following topic - http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/573081-hellhole/63671751
SBAllen responding to the issue of lower PotD vote totals - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/vc3jz/i_am_the_administrator_of_gamefaqscom_ama/c53aq06?context=3