Hi all,
Since the HTTP to HTTPS change last summer, a number of Wikipedia Library and GLAM partners have reported a drop in traffic reported as "referrals" from Wikipedia, where many of these referrals are being reported as organic referrals, effectively creating "dark traffic".
Dario Taraborelli from the research team, worked with Wikimedia Ops to find a solution to this problem. He and I are also working with a number of movement partners to understand this effect, and better assess how Wikipedia references provide referrals to frequently cited websites (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_referrer_policy and https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87276 ).
Last Tuesday (Feb 23) the ops team turned on a new "meta referrer tag" so that sites getting traffic via clicks from Wikimedia pages may see these referrals in analytics reports. Several publishers have of an increase in correctly labeled Wikimedia traffic.
Since this effect has been in place for about a week: you may want to let your partners at cultural heritage institutions know about this change. Historically, referrals have been a indicator of partnership success and a persuasive tool for organizations to participate, and the HTTPS change may have obscured this.
Moreover, if your GLAM partners would be interested in supporting by sharing referral traffic: we will be collecting partner analytics data from January 1 to March 30 in about a month. Let me know if you think your GLAM partner would like to participate.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
Excellent, Thanks for sharing the news. A quick look at Google Analytics shows a sharp rise in Referrals from Wikipedia since last week.
Also, I am happy to share analytics from the National Library of Wales.
Best
Jason
On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 16:01 GMT, Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
Since the HTTP to HTTPS change last summer, a number of Wikipedia Library and GLAM partners have reported a drop in traffic reported as "referrals" from Wikipedia, where many of these referrals are being reported as organic referrals, effectively creating "dark traffic".
Dario Taraborelli from the research team, worked with Wikimedia Ops to find a solution to this problem. He and I are also working with a number of movement partners to understand this effect, and better assess how Wikipedia references provide referrals to frequently cited websites (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_referrer_policy and https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87276 ).
Last Tuesday (Feb 23) the ops team turned on a new "meta referrer tag" so that sites getting traffic via clicks from Wikimedia pages may see these referrals in analytics reports. Several publishers have of an increase in correctly labeled Wikimedia traffic.
Since this effect has been in place for about a week: you may want to let your partners at cultural heritage institutions know about this change. Historically, referrals have been a indicator of partnership success and a persuasive tool for organizations to participate, and the HTTPS change may have obscured this.
Moreover, if your GLAM partners would be interested in supporting by
sharing referral traffic: we will be collecting partner analytics data from January 1 to March 30 in about a month. Let me know if you think your GLAM partner would like to participate.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
Brilliant! Thanks Jason glad to confirm the impact, hope it helps with your internal discussions. I will add you to our list of people to collect from, and will send you the email we sent out to our research partners.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:45 AM, Jason J. Evans jason.evans@llgc.org.uk wrote:
Excellent, Thanks for sharing the news. A quick look at Google Analytics shows a sharp rise in Referrals from Wikipedia since last week.
Also, I am happy to share analytics from the National Library of Wales.
Best
Jason
On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 16:01 GMT, Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
Since the HTTP to HTTPS change last summer, a number of Wikipedia Library and GLAM partners have reported a drop in traffic reported as "referrals" from Wikipedia, where many of these referrals are being reported as
organic
referrals, effectively creating "dark traffic".
Dario Taraborelli from the research team, worked with Wikimedia Ops to
find
a solution to this problem. He and I are also working with a number of movement partners to understand this effect, and better assess how Wikipedia references provide referrals to frequently cited websites (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_referrer_policy
and
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87276 ).
Last Tuesday (Feb 23) the ops team turned on a new "meta referrer tag" so that sites getting traffic via clicks from Wikimedia pages may see these referrals in analytics reports. Several publishers have of an increase in correctly labeled Wikimedia traffic.
Since this effect has been in place for about a week: you may want to let your partners at cultural heritage institutions know about this change. Historically, referrals have been a indicator of partnership success and
a
persuasive tool for organizations to participate, and the HTTPS change
may
have obscured this.
Moreover, if your GLAM partners would be interested in supporting by
sharing referral traffic: we will be collecting partner analytics data
from
January 1 to March 30 in about a month. Let me know if you think your
GLAM
partner would like to participate.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
-- Jason Evans Wicipediwr Preswyl / Wikipedian in Residence Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales jason.evans@llgc.org.uk Ffon/Tel: +44 (0)1970 632405
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.
Hello,
I have had this request from a lot of partner organizations (~30). Although the request is common, and organizations say they want the data, I am not sure that if they had the data they would actually use it or know how to interpret it.
Just the same - if I could make a labor request of WMF staff, it would be for staff to create layman documentation on what it means to track incoming traffic from Wikipedia. My expectation is that more organizations would get more satisfaction from knowing that it is possible to track incoming traffic, even if they decided not to do this. Right now I mostly say, "It is difficult, I do not know, your IT department can tell you..." Instead, I wish I could say, "Here is the layman guide. It links to more detailed information."
Part of serving movement partners is offering them possibilities and giving them instructions. There is not always capacity to take advantage of options, but often having layman outreach materials opens doors and has value beyond assisting people in performing an action.
If there is someone clever and interested at the intersection of movement partner management and analytics, here is what I would request -
1. Layman guide presuming no technical understanding 2. making a case for tracking inbound traffic to their site through citations (not emphasizing external links) 3. giving a timeless overview on how to do this 4. linking to detailed more up-to-date instructions
I confirm that this would be useful. Getting organizations to actually collect and reflect on this data is a more complicated issue and will take time. I would be interested to read reports of any organization which does this.
yours,
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Brilliant! Thanks Jason glad to confirm the impact, hope it helps with your internal discussions. I will add you to our list of people to collect from, and will send you the email we sent out to our research partners.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:45 AM, Jason J. Evans jason.evans@llgc.org.uk wrote:
Excellent, Thanks for sharing the news. A quick look at Google Analytics shows a sharp rise in Referrals from Wikipedia since last week.
Also, I am happy to share analytics from the National Library of Wales.
Best
Jason
On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 16:01 GMT, Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi all,
Since the HTTP to HTTPS change last summer, a number of Wikipedia
Library
and GLAM partners have reported a drop in traffic reported as
"referrals"
from Wikipedia, where many of these referrals are being reported as
organic
referrals, effectively creating "dark traffic".
Dario Taraborelli from the research team, worked with Wikimedia Ops to
find
a solution to this problem. He and I are also working with a number of movement partners to understand this effect, and better assess how Wikipedia references provide referrals to frequently cited websites (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_referrer_policy
and
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87276 ).
Last Tuesday (Feb 23) the ops team turned on a new "meta referrer tag"
so
that sites getting traffic via clicks from Wikimedia pages may see these referrals in analytics reports. Several publishers have of an increase
in
correctly labeled Wikimedia traffic.
Since this effect has been in place for about a week: you may want to
let
your partners at cultural heritage institutions know about this change. Historically, referrals have been a indicator of partnership success
and a
persuasive tool for organizations to participate, and the HTTPS change
may
have obscured this.
Moreover, if your GLAM partners would be interested in supporting by
sharing referral traffic: we will be collecting partner analytics data
from
January 1 to March 30 in about a month. Let me know if you think your
GLAM
partner would like to participate.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
-- Jason Evans Wicipediwr Preswyl / Wikipedian in Residence Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales jason.evans@llgc.org.uk Ffon/Tel: +44 (0)1970 632405
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.
Hey Lane,
Dario and I are going to spend some time, in our research around Dark traffic, to analyze what is happening in terms of "referrals" for the partner organizations that participate. Once that is done, we plan on creating several types of communications, including a detailed report and a blog post which talks about what has changed related to the dark traffic AND analyzes the referrals in terms of "How much is Wikipedia referring to reliable sources more generally? And what value does that referral traffic provide for those organizations?" I will keep your use case in mind when we work on that.
However, I think what you are asking for might be better met by a learning pattern: I highly recommend starting one, so all of the volunteers with experience helping organizations track this data, can share there experiences and recommendations. Here is the instructions for doing that that: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns . I will definitely contribute part of my experience there as well.
Also, you mention trying to track citations vs. external links: as far as I am aware, there is no clear technical way to distinguish between citations and external links in outgoing traffic.
Cheers,
Alex
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 2:06 PM, Lane Rasberry lane@bluerasberry.com wrote:
Hello,
I have had this request from a lot of partner organizations (~30). Although the request is common, and organizations say they want the data, I am not sure that if they had the data they would actually use it or know how to interpret it.
Just the same - if I could make a labor request of WMF staff, it would be for staff to create layman documentation on what it means to track incoming traffic from Wikipedia. My expectation is that more organizations would get more satisfaction from knowing that it is possible to track incoming traffic, even if they decided not to do this. Right now I mostly say, "It is difficult, I do not know, your IT department can tell you..." Instead, I wish I could say, "Here is the layman guide. It links to more detailed information."
Part of serving movement partners is offering them possibilities and giving them instructions. There is not always capacity to take advantage of options, but often having layman outreach materials opens doors and has value beyond assisting people in performing an action.
If there is someone clever and interested at the intersection of movement partner management and analytics, here is what I would request -
- Layman guide presuming no technical understanding
- making a case for tracking inbound traffic to their site through
citations (not emphasizing external links) 3. giving a timeless overview on how to do this 4. linking to detailed more up-to-date instructions
I confirm that this would be useful. Getting organizations to actually collect and reflect on this data is a more complicated issue and will take time. I would be interested to read reports of any organization which does this.
yours,
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Alex Stinson astinson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Brilliant! Thanks Jason glad to confirm the impact, hope it helps with your internal discussions. I will add you to our list of people to collect from, and will send you the email we sent out to our research partners.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 11:45 AM, Jason J. Evans jason.evans@llgc.org.uk wrote:
Excellent, Thanks for sharing the news. A quick look at Google Analytics shows a sharp rise in Referrals from Wikipedia since last week.
Also, I am happy to share analytics from the National Library of Wales.
Best
Jason
On Tuesday, March 1, 2016 16:01 GMT, Alex Stinson < astinson@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi all,
Since the HTTP to HTTPS change last summer, a number of Wikipedia
Library
and GLAM partners have reported a drop in traffic reported as
"referrals"
from Wikipedia, where many of these referrals are being reported as
organic
referrals, effectively creating "dark traffic".
Dario Taraborelli from the research team, worked with Wikimedia Ops to
find
a solution to this problem. He and I are also working with a number of movement partners to understand this effect, and better assess how Wikipedia references provide referrals to frequently cited websites
(see
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikimedia_referrer_policy and
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87276 ).
Last Tuesday (Feb 23) the ops team turned on a new "meta referrer tag"
so
that sites getting traffic via clicks from Wikimedia pages may see
these
referrals in analytics reports. Several publishers have of an increase
in
correctly labeled Wikimedia traffic.
Since this effect has been in place for about a week: you may want to
let
your partners at cultural heritage institutions know about this change. Historically, referrals have been a indicator of partnership success
and a
persuasive tool for organizations to participate, and the HTTPS change
may
have obscured this.
Moreover, if your GLAM partners would be interested in supporting by
sharing referral traffic: we will be collecting partner analytics data
from
January 1 to March 30 in about a month. Let me know if you think your
GLAM
partner would like to participate.
Cheers,
Alex Stinson
-- Jason Evans Wicipediwr Preswyl / Wikipedian in Residence Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales jason.evans@llgc.org.uk Ffon/Tel: +44 (0)1970 632405
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.
-- Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia 206.801.0814 lane@bluerasberry.com
Cultural-Partners mailing list Cultural-Partners@wikimedia.ch https://intern.wikimedia.ch/lists/listinfo/cultural-partners Please treat emails sent to this list as confidential.Ask senders for permission before forwarding emails off-list.