A History of Rainy Days

Rainy Day - magicpen / pixelio.de

Last week, I noticed a sudden increase of traffic on my blog. It wasn't huge but still noticeable. At first, I wondered what could have caused it. I didn't post any new material or was active on social networks so it most likely wasn't anything that I did that caused the increase. After taking a closer look at what posts were particularly popular on the peak days, I came back with a strong suspect: real life rain.

The Connection Between Popular Posts and Local Weather

Two of the most popular posts on my blog are rainy day posts. The original one is called 10 Fun Things to do on a Rainy Day in Switzerland and its sequel Another 10 Fun Things to do on a Rainy Day in Switzerland. The original has over 35'000 views/visitors and the sequel at least a few thousand. Not outstanding but quite alright as it is.

Now, most of my blogs traffic that comes through organic search goes to the Swiss German Dictionary but there is also a considerable amount going to my rainy day posts. When I filtered the landing pages of my organic search traffic I received this interesting graph:

You can clearly see the spikes on days and weeks with rain in Switzerland! In a way, it's my blogs log of rainy days in Switzerland.

The Lesson Learned

I always knew that events in the real world affect people's search patterns, I just didn't expect to be to see it so clearly on my own blog. Maybe now that the hot and sunny summer days in Switzerland are just around the corner, I'll also see an increase in traffic on 10 Fun Things to do on a Sunny Day in Switzerland and 10 Fun Things to do on a Summer Day in Zurich.

I do suspect, however, that people usually have no trouble in finding things to do in good weather. It's the bad weather that usually challenges our creativity.

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