Site Traffic of Select Photography Websites, 2012

I’m in the midst of doing some market research on a project, and while I was compiling site traffic data on Compete.com, curiosity got the better of me and I started looking at site traffic for some of the photography websites that I visit regularly. One thing led to another and I plotted the 2012 traffic for a whole bunch of photo websites. Here are the results:
Click on the image if you want to see it larger.


A lot of this is pretty obvious – the 800# gorilla (DP Review) is in fact an 800# gorilla. Photo.net was in freefall in 2012, and PopPhoto.com had a curious June. What’s most interesting to me is that traditional publishers appear to have missed the USS Internet completely; their numbers languish in the lower third of this chart. Let’s zoom in a bit…

I haven’t included any Nikon or Canon forums simply because I don’t visit them. I’d be curious where they lie. If there’s interest, maybe the next chart will be on forums only.

You might be wondering how this information is compiled. Compete.com has 2 million consumers that have agreed to have their web surfing habits tracked – sort of like a modern day Nielsen. They claim to have the largest sample of consumers out there and work hard to make sure that it’s a representative sample. I’m not sure if they track mobile usage from smartphones and tablets – I have a question into them and will update when they respond.