Oh, I was living under the illusion that there was some kind of event that brought in hoards of new people on that day. I guess it's only obvious to those who know.
Anyway, congratulations on the popularity. I somehow feel that it'll be the first of many spikes.

Appropriately enough, there will be a corresponding exponential decline in activity. Most of those visitors would have clicked out of curiosity and left. Not to detract from the achievement, that's just slashdotting for you. We will see repeats in future I'm sure.

They dropped the story into the holiday weekend in order to soften the splash.

People haven't grasped the gravity of the situation yet. The IEA has turned.

Think again Twilight. You sure the activity is going to taper off much? I'm nearly 100% in agreement with your posts, but on this point I'm taking the opposite corner.

Yeah, much of the traffic will click and leave, but there are plenty more out there, so I think your future repeats are going to come hot and heavy and on a steep upward trajectory.

We'll add a zero here shortly...and then another.

Sustained traffic isn't the whole story. It's the meme. If people start to turn the corner in believing peak oil, it will become the topic du jour over the watercooler. So there could be a good cascade of effect from this as it filters out through the mainstream.

Yes, the timing may be a little curious from an American point of view, but the rest of the world does not necessarily celebrate Memorial Day

I was under the impression that the event at that time was a spike in the aftermath of Katrina. Dunno if that's accurate.

We've peaked!

Rita

It was three days after Hurricane Rita hit. No one knew the status of all of those oil platforms that were pummelled. The oil price that day was 65.07, which we all thought was unsustainably high.

That looks more like falling off the cliff ! What's the depletion rate, like 80%?

[align=center][/align]

The sudden spike for traffic on Peak Oil sites obviously coincides with the recent price peak of $147 per barrel of crude. But after all that publicity created by an overheated market and record gasoline prices, the traffic to PO.com has returned to below what it was before (according to Alexa).

I notice that the web traffic numbers on the front page appear to be declining MORE than what Alex indicates. They used to average right around 600 people online at any given time. Now the average appears to be half that amount.

To me, this means that the content of sites like PO.com appeals to a certain type of mental mindset -- people who come here and decide to stay. Otherwise the number and variety of opinions expressed here would be much greater and the science of petroleum depletion and/or inevitable die-off (if valid) would convince great numbers of former cornacopians (or persons initially ignorant of the problem) into rabid Doomers eager to prepare for an imminent survivalist future.

Where did everybody go?

I wanted to teach them all about the strange events of 911.

August is a popular month for vacations. Everyone is at the beach. They'll be back, school is starting up again.

Single day events hardly matter statistically.

But it's a portent for the future.