Why the traffic ranks of most places are suddenly very low?

[MeshPromo]

I have a somewhat popular parcel with around 10000 traffic rank until the last March. But during the previous few weeks, it decreased to 4000 something.

I heard that LL stopped counting bots for traffic but I never used bots.

Also, I didn't see much reduction in visitors to make the traffic rank lower than half.

Then I visited some other sims and the situation is also similar. One of my favorite beaches (Golden Sun) which had around 40K traffic rank now has only 7K. Sandbox Shiromani had around 10K traffic, now around 1K. I'm very sure none of those sims use bots.

During the summer the SL users are going out and are less likely to be online than in winter. But I saw in Firestorm that the SL online users are still around 50K, which is still a higher number.

Is there any reason for this traffic count reduction when I can't see any visitor numbers reduction?

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, MeshPromo said:

I heard that LL stopped counting bots for traffic but I never used bots.

I'm not sure about your current situation, but bots (accounts marked as Scripted Agents) haven't counted for traffic for at least a couple years now, so that's unlikely to affect you.

"Traffic bots" are just bots people intentionally don't mark as Scripted Agents, to bypass LL's traffic discounting.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[diamond Marchant]

23 hours ago, MeshPromo said:

Is there any reason for this traffic count reduction when I can't see any visitor numbers reduction?

Traffic is computed by summing up visit times that last longer than 5 minutes. So it is possible that a parcel could receive a bunch of sub 5-minute visits that would not be reflected in the traffic statistic.

Yesterday, I hosted a party on a mainland parcel attended by approximately 20 people for two hours. The expected traffic number would be in the ball park of 2400  (120 minutes X 20 people). The actual traffic number I see today is 2234, so the traffic statistic seems to be working (at least on April 16 in my region).