These figures show an extremely precipitous (and permanent) decline in traffic over the course of a few days in May of 2022 [0], during which the number of daily new visits dropped from ~1M to ~300K, the number of total daily page views dropped from ~20M to ~14M, and the number of daily sessions dropped from ~9.4M to ~6.1M.
However, there is no commensurate decrease in posts/votes during the same time period. Posts/votes remained relatively constant through 2022 (modulo normal seasonal fluctuations), until February 2023 when both fell off a cliff (I assume due to the rise of LLMs). Traffic data are sourced from Google Analytics, while post/vote data are computed internally by StackOverflow [1]. I wonder if the apparent precipitous drop in traffic in May 2022 is simply an artifact of Google Analytics suddenly changing how it tracks traffic/visitors.
From the comments on this answer https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/391625/136010 it is suggested and agreed by staff that the chnage in May 2022 was the role out of a proper cookie consent form. If you don"t have performance cookies SO can"t work out the analytics.
Fro staff member Catija
"@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Yeah, if you go back further, the "traffic" numbers see a 40M/week drop between April and May 2022, which is when the cookie tracking changed, and then normalizes again until December. So, prior to the cookie changes, traffic was about 140-150M per week. But, to be clear - this is stuff we're aware of and have "corrected" for, I guess."
the post doesn't explain where they got these traffic numbers, and it seems unlikely they have access to stackoverflow's real traffic stats. they're using some sort of estimation here. there's always a chance that their estimates are wrong - especially if they're showing implausible shifts like this.
That makes sense. "New visits" are first time users, likely young coders who are looking up answers to things on a search engine, find what they're looking for on Stack Overflow, maybe click on an ad, and leave. They probably don't vote or post much. A sudden die-off there suggests something very bad happened to organic traffic (change in Google? Terrible new SEO scheme? A sudden stop in ad buys?)
The new content rate been dropping at a dismally constant rate for a long time, but the first few months in 2023 were awfully grim. I wonder what might've corresponded to that.
If SO was worried about that drop I think they would have bought back some of that traffic. More likely something has changed how they count the visits or they blocked some bad traffic. Traffic data is often sampled as well.
The fall in the beginning of 2023 may be the introduction of ChatGPT. A more worrying idea is that the numbers reflect not just the decline of SO but a decline of the whole IT business.
Which would make sense, right? You are more likely to get an answer on StackOverflow for questions that touch very common technology (because more people are likely to answer). And that is exactly where Copilot probably shines too (I don't use it): because that is where there is a lot of training data.
I personally used to like StackOverflow as my last recourse: I grew up in those years where we had to RTFM, and I kept the habit. So if I go ask on StackOverflow, it is a tricky question. It used to be fine, and I was getting an answer eventually (sometimes after adding a bounty).
But in the last few years, I have had legit questions downvoted or even closed, and it was obvious that the people voting to close it did not even understand it. I agree that the moderation culture on StackOverflow is toxic. If everytime I contribute something, I have to fight to not get downvoted or closed, then I will slowly stop contributing.
The most help I ever got from SO for questions not already there, was because of their (perceived) strictness. The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it.
> The process of writing a high-quality question, with a minimally viable example, clearly lined out thought-processes, and other things tried, solved the question for me in most cases without me ever having to post it.
Nevertheless post the question and provide an answer. Everybody wins: you reap the upvotes, and everyone else benefits from the shared knowledge.
My SO account is almost 12 years, with just over 2k reputation and I don't really care. Until now I am still somewhat helping answer some basic questions in the mobile development area tags, my only gripe with SO is the hostile nature of some mods with large reputation. Some seem to get a kick out of this and forgot that reputation does not translate to expertise.
For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New users will ask a very valid question and then won't respond anymore. I have seen this one played out every single day. Back in the day, users were generous with the upvotes even for a simple basic question, this is not the case anymore today.
I think that with the rise of push notifications, no one really goes to a site to check notifications anymore. So the new user may have not developed the muscle memory to go back to SO and participate. I suspect this also has something to do with the decline of forums. Reddit still works because the app sends 200 notifications a day, but without it, I don’t think it would be as popular.
Also SO is participation hostile unless you’re a pro, so as a newbie I’m not going to do anything other than ask and lurk, because I’m not worthy
At least part of the reason for the hostility is that SO is a game. You get points, but you can also prevent others from getting points by voting down or removing their questions and answers.
On SO this hostility is pronounced because participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job.
I don't know if we all do it the same way. I don't use push notifications for barely anything, because I don't want to be disturbed by random sites (least of all linkedin or SO.)
Since SO is often used in a professional capacity, that problem could have easily been fixed by dev tools providing a formal way to link to SO traffic for topics that are relevant to the team.
It's just been a while since anyone has started trying to integrate tools with each other, outside of the established players.
these peasants with high reputation thinking they are johnskeet
reputation is meaningless and bloated in stackoverflow now there are many 100k reputation people because asking or answering basic shits on javascript/python/pandas/git
Every time I posted on SO(or other SE sites) I always have to clarify my question with something like "I know it's probably not good idea to do A, and I understand B could be a better solution, but in my specific situation I really want to do A."
Then people will still try to close my question because it's a duplicate of B.
I've literally included the search terms I used to ensure it wasn't a duplicate. Other times ice explained why this is clearly not a duplicate . Nope. Closed for being a duplicate.
Sometimes it can be as simple as "version 2 of this software does things this way, but I'm using version 14, how can I do this?". "Closed as duplicate: [question from 12 years ago]".
I think the problem is google losing the fight with spammers.
It's being a while for me that I have to put "stackoverflow" in the search query to avoid sites with scraped content
Google is not "losing" any fight. Google is deliberately letting spam thrive because that spam may contain Google Ads/analytics and increases engagement on the SERP page as people who click on the spam go back to try something else (potentially one of the sponsored results). All these contribute to Google's bottom-line.
That's my guess too; I'm sure Google drives the overwhelming majority of SO traffic.
A few years ago, my programming-related queries would hit Stack Overflow as the first or second result. Now it's very frequently spammy garbage in the top 2-3 slots.
What kind of spam do you get when searching something specific and technical? Who is trying to SEO their way to the top for "how to set redis max memory"? A lot of comments here saying the spam is beating out SO, but what spam and from who and why??
especially YouTube links. sadly, it would not surprise me if these people are earning a decent enough money from ads to make it worth their while to be "content creators" solely from search results from Googs
It is both infuriating and sad that Google can‘t figure out a way to compensate for this SEO spam. Is there an easier problem than doing it for SO (and yes, coding is a big enough problem for Google imho to be worth investing a little here).
Which means they aren't applying any sort of primacy to the information.
If three segments of the internet think the same piece of information is relevant, that should affect the score of all 3 copies, not just the largest segment.
I think we're rapidly approaching a point where any content that come with ads is suspect. The fact that only Wikipedia has managed to largely escape deterioration (or as some call it, "enshitification") is testament to this. A search engine that can selectively search non-sponsored content or soft-paywalled content would be potentially quite popular. However, monetising such a service without ads will be a challenge.
What’s interesting is that Google was known for how hard it was to figure out the Google algorithm.
Remember, when people were hired because they knew the secret sauce on how to get the best Google ranking. Google experts?
Well, it turns out that the person at Google that was responsible for keeping the algorithm fresh and the search results fresh retired and everything went to shit when they left.
Actually, I’m betting that person did leave the company, but the real damage happened when someone came along and convinced everyone they knew the real trick to better search results and we have the shit that is now Google. Nice work new guy! Let me rephrase that. Nice work to the guy that thinks they are smarter than everyone else and still thinks their approach is the best, yet evidence to the contrary.
Really sounds as if your made up story is deeply rooted in your own experience. I am sorry if something like a new guy taking your position and claiming to be smarter has happened to you but creating imaginary stories is not quite what this comment section needs and you'd probably be better off dealing with this in a different way
Matt Cutts was instrumental in community outreach and helping SEO differentiate from spam. When he left, Search pivoted to stuff like using Twitter data and lifting content directly from websites into results. While it’s probably hard to attribute all the changes to one person, Matt Cutts made a huge impact on the product.
I left SO because I was downvoted to oblivion for an answer that took me 2 minutes to write - but I had answered a similar question several years before (which I actually didn't remember). Searching for my own answer would have taken way more time than it took to write a new one.
When I pointed out that it's not the responsibility of the one answering to search for dupes, but for the one asking, I was told that I should still invest the time or otherwise don't answer at all.
Yes especially if you know you have answered the same thing before. You look for your original.
Remember all users are moderators. There are some explicit moderators but they don"t close or downvote often they deal with other problems - or on smaller sites just use normal user powers to vote and close.
I'd also like to highlight "non-hostile" as a reason why folks might prefer ChatGPT.
Stack Overflow has a lot of stridently opinionated jerks contributing to it, and if I can just ask ChatGPT a question and get an answer that works rather than having to deal with being belittled by those people, then I'm probably having a much better day as a result.
This post, to me, is about the rise of ChatGPT — but I do think over-moderation is a huge problem.
I had a hard moment on the gamedev stackexchange where I was stuck trying to learn how to do something in OpenGL. A moderator immediately closed my question as a duplicate because there was a similar question about OpenGL ES, which is a (related but) different API. I tried to plead my case, but was shut down.
Shortly after that, I gave up on the game I'd been working on for a couple years. The mod's decision contributed to that.
I felt stuck by a wall between me and answers to some of my game programming questions. Over-moderation is more than an inconvenience. It can destroy the ability of users to get things done.
The graphs in the post show the traffic decline starting around May 2022, months before ChatGPT was available. I'd wager the cause is a change in Google's algorithm. Most of the time I end up on Stack Overflow, it's because I've typed a question into a search engine.
The top search resuls used to be either a SO answer, or a forum post or the actual docs having the answer to the question. These days it's either a dupe site copy pasting ad verbatim, a recurgitated and slightly modified variant of the former, or a "AI" generated answer, all full of ads. And to make it worse, none of them are useful as they obfuscate the answer or are simply wrong.
Looks like Google started to prioritise ads even more than actual useful results is what changed mostly.
This is a problem on the other side of the experience spectrum too. Sometimes I want to ask an advanced question and interact with other experienced users on SO. However I have to battle the mods (who clearly don’t understand my question) to keep it open.
My questions usually go unanswered for years with several "me too"s and "did you ever figure it out?"s nailing my inbox.
I do typically self-answer if I figure it out, but you know, if I'm going to be ignored maybe it should be a github issue so I can get the sweet zero replies and that juicy 90 day auto-close from inactivity.
I remember trying to learn front end development around 2013, was fascinated by responsive web design and twitter bootstrap. Asked some questions on that site, was mostly ridiculed for my amateur questions several times, never touched the site again and also never learned front end. So this is my story with that site.
Same. I got put in StackOverflow jail for posting my contribution an answer because I didn't have enough karma to post a comment on a previous answer (or maybe it was the other way around, I forget). Never mind that I was earnestly trying to help the original poster, and pointed out a legitimate mistake in one of the answers. I broke protocol and had to be punished.
You don"t need any karma to answer any logged in thing can answer. I say thing as ChatGPT is being used to produce a load or crappy wrong answers now.
Thus I don"t understand your issue. This is a XY-problem :) I know enough about the subject to know that your issue is not the actual issue as anyone can answer, if you had issues then there is something else.
Readit News
However, there is no commensurate decrease in posts/votes during the same time period. Posts/votes remained relatively constant through 2022 (modulo normal seasonal fluctuations), until February 2023 when both fell off a cliff (I assume due to the rise of LLMs). Traffic data are sourced from Google Analytics, while post/vote data are computed internally by StackOverflow [1]. I wonder if the apparent precipitous drop in traffic in May 2022 is simply an artifact of Google Analytics suddenly changing how it tracks traffic/visitors.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/qMj7Lge.png
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36856249
"@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Yeah, if you go back further, the "traffic" numbers see a 40M/week drop between April and May 2022, which is when the cookie tracking changed, and then normalizes again until December. So, prior to the cookie changes, traffic was about 140-150M per week. But, to be clear - this is stuff we're aware of and have "corrected" for, I guess."
the post doesn't explain where they got these traffic numbers, and it seems unlikely they have access to stackoverflow's real traffic stats. they're using some sort of estimation here. there's always a chance that their estimates are wrong - especially if they're showing implausible shifts like this.
The new content rate been dropping at a dismally constant rate for a long time, but the first few months in 2023 were awfully grim. I wonder what might've corresponded to that.
The fall in the beginning of 2023 may be the introduction of ChatGPT. A more worrying idea is that the numbers reflect not just the decline of SO but a decline of the whole IT business.
I personally used to like StackOverflow as my last recourse: I grew up in those years where we had to RTFM, and I kept the habit. So if I go ask on StackOverflow, it is a tricky question. It used to be fine, and I was getting an answer eventually (sometimes after adding a bounty).
But in the last few years, I have had legit questions downvoted or even closed, and it was obvious that the people voting to close it did not even understand it. I agree that the moderation culture on StackOverflow is toxic. If everytime I contribute something, I have to fight to not get downvoted or closed, then I will slowly stop contributing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
Nevertheless post the question and provide an answer. Everybody wins: you reap the upvotes, and everyone else benefits from the shared knowledge.
For 12 years, they have not figured this one out. New users will ask a very valid question and then won't respond anymore. I have seen this one played out every single day. Back in the day, users were generous with the upvotes even for a simple basic question, this is not the case anymore today.
Also SO is participation hostile unless you’re a pro, so as a newbie I’m not going to do anything other than ask and lurk, because I’m not worthy
On SO this hostility is pronounced because participants believe that if they get a lot of points they have easier time finding a well-paying job.
It's just been a while since anyone has started trying to integrate tools with each other, outside of the established players.
reputation is meaningless and bloated in stackoverflow now there are many 100k reputation people because asking or answering basic shits on javascript/python/pandas/git
Then people will still try to close my question because it's a duplicate of B.
Then you point out that they completely disregarded what you wrote and blame you for misdirecting them. Then you get the downvotes.
The SO way.
Deleted Comment
A few years ago, my programming-related queries would hit Stack Overflow as the first or second result. Now it's very frequently spammy garbage in the top 2-3 slots.
especially YouTube links. sadly, it would not surprise me if these people are earning a decent enough money from ads to make it worth their while to be "content creators" solely from search results from Googs
If three segments of the internet think the same piece of information is relevant, that should affect the score of all 3 copies, not just the largest segment.
Remember, when people were hired because they knew the secret sauce on how to get the best Google ranking. Google experts?
Well, it turns out that the person at Google that was responsible for keeping the algorithm fresh and the search results fresh retired and everything went to shit when they left.
Actually, I’m betting that person did leave the company, but the real damage happened when someone came along and convinced everyone they knew the real trick to better search results and we have the shit that is now Google. Nice work new guy! Let me rephrase that. Nice work to the guy that thinks they are smarter than everyone else and still thinks their approach is the best, yet evidence to the contrary.
When I pointed out that it's not the responsibility of the one answering to search for dupes, but for the one asking, I was told that I should still invest the time or otherwise don't answer at all.
Remember all users are moderators. There are some explicit moderators but they don"t close or downvote often they deal with other problems - or on smaller sites just use normal user powers to vote and close.
The fault finding culture of SO is toxic.
SO will remain as a library for unseen problems, which is what's supposed to be good for.
Stack Overflow has a lot of stridently opinionated jerks contributing to it, and if I can just ask ChatGPT a question and get an answer that works rather than having to deal with being belittled by those people, then I'm probably having a much better day as a result.
I had a hard moment on the gamedev stackexchange where I was stuck trying to learn how to do something in OpenGL. A moderator immediately closed my question as a duplicate because there was a similar question about OpenGL ES, which is a (related but) different API. I tried to plead my case, but was shut down.
Shortly after that, I gave up on the game I'd been working on for a couple years. The mod's decision contributed to that.
I felt stuck by a wall between me and answers to some of my game programming questions. Over-moderation is more than an inconvenience. It can destroy the ability of users to get things done.
Looks like Google started to prioritise ads even more than actual useful results is what changed mostly.
I do typically self-answer if I figure it out, but you know, if I'm going to be ignored maybe it should be a github issue so I can get the sweet zero replies and that juicy 90 day auto-close from inactivity.
Thus I don"t understand your issue. This is a XY-problem :) I know enough about the subject to know that your issue is not the actual issue as anyone can answer, if you had issues then there is something else.
My friend, a much less skilled developer, was much better at the craft of SO. I just lurk/solve my own issues
I have only had great experience with SO, but regardless, don't get dissuaded by those with less than mediocre tact.