While checking the traffic stats for WineLog today, I was surprised to see a slice of the executive overview pie reserved for traffic from AOL (2.11% of all traffic for the past week).
After checking the referrals log it seems that we hadn’t been linked to from an AOL page. The traffic from AOL is labeled “organic” (i.e. from a Search Engine). The reason I’m surprised by the number is that, for the same week, I have just 2.06% of my traffic from organic Yahoo Searches. So more people are getting to my site through AOL searches than Yahoo searches. Who are these people searching the web from AOL? Are more people really using AOL’s search these days than Yahoo!’s?
AOL of course uses a branded version of Google for their search (“powered by Google”). This might be part of the equation, as WineLog tends to show up higher in Google’s searches than Yahoo!’s. Then again, maybe there is a rise in use of AOL for searching. I wonder if anyone else is seeing a similar patern in their own traffic.
Here are some more numbers for perspective: Non-AOL, Google searches account for nearly 80% of the traffic to the site in the same period. MSN searches account for less than 1%.