I noticed since the last few months that the number of visitors to my blog reduces to a noticeable amount on weekends. Now since I work full time for IT Company, I generally get time to write my posts and publish them on weekends. What kept coming on my mind and I guess many more bloggers might have similar thoughts – “Whether publishing time really matters? If it matters then, what is the best time to publish our posts?”
I started searching the internet about “Best time to publish my posts” and I came across a website. I found that someone called Jake Luciani has already done a hefty research on this topic by analyzing over 10,000 entries from Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Mixx and found out the best and worst times to publish your posts.
According to Luciani’s research:
- The best time to post is Tuesday to Friday between 10am and 2pm Pacific Standard Time (PST)
- The worst time to post is on Saturday or Sunday between 3 and 5pm PST
These observations seem to correlate with the times US blog readers are most active online (around lunchtime and just after work on weekdays), so posting around these times should work well for bloggers whose readership is mostly based in this area of the world.
For further details about Luciani’s findings and see some visual graphs, head over to ReadWriteWeb.
Now if your readership is located around some other part of the world, you have to consider altering these times to suit your audiences’ active time.
I hope this post will be useful to you in deciding the best time to publish your blog posts. Please let me know what you think about Jake Luciani’s research by leaving your comments and opinions below.
This is a very interesting topic. So I guess the best time to post is after a coffee break or lunch break when people have time to come back and relax a little before start working again. The Jack Luciani observation and graphs are pretty sweet! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your comment Justin. Its really an amazing find by Luciani well proven by graphs. I’m glad and honored that you liked my post and left a comment.
This is a really interesting observation. And my posting time falls within the best time, and I try to be consistent with that. I am not sure about the weekends being the worst time because I get regular traffic all throughout the week.
By ‘best time’ did you consider your reader demographies? Because if you have mostly US visitors, then consider the time difference to find out the best time. Since you have a regular traffic source it might not affect much.
Cheers,
Prasenjit.
My top two countries for traffic are US and India. So it won’t effect much if I follow the Indian peak times or the US peak times. But I prefer the US one, and then I leave it to my fellow bloggers to share it and I also depend on search engine traffic which is same all the time.
Thats quite obvious. If you rely on Search Engine traffic, then it hardly matters. But imagine if you digg a post when it’s night at US, then it’ll soon get below the list and readers will hardly see it to digg it up again. Does it make sense?
Regards,
Prasenjit.
That’s a good point. Digg has been useless for me.
Yeah Digg is difficult. Even for me.
People StumbleUpon some of my posts, especially the ones which are not India specific but so far, I can’t recall a single person coming to my site through DIGG. I’ve stopped submitting my links to Digg.
I’m working hard on building a following on Twitter these days and of course plugging away on the Indiblogger forum and dropping in on the Bloggers.com site every now and then. Blog Catalog is useless.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Digg and Stumbleupon with us.
Twitter is a good medium to attract visitors.
Thank you for sharing this valuable information, Prasenjit. I didn’t know that there was even a study done about the best time to publishing posts. Yes, most of the traffic really does come from the US.
Hi Felicia,
Thanks for your comment. Its really an amazing study.
Best,
Prasenjit.
My mentor told me that it most effective to publish between 12 am to 10pm Pacific time
Hi Semidoppel,
It depends much on your target audience. Your mentor might have suggested it based on your traffic source. By the way is your mentor an SEO expert? We would also like to know your visitors geo-location.
Cheers.
I think it depends on your niche, why you are blogging,and who your targeted audience are all in all, writing the blog post is a minor case, to make it successful you have to promote it effectively.
Thanks for the post
Hey Praz,
I am new to your site, I just stumbled upon it today. ( :
You have a nice thing going here, and thanks for the info! It makes a lot of sense cause on the weekends people are probably out doing things and not sitting at home on the computer. I never thought about this but you have a very good point here.
Thanks again.
God bless,
William Veasley
Hey William,
Thanks a lot for stumbling across my site. I’m happy that my finding helped you. It is really a very unusual finding by Luciani.
Hi Prasenjit.
Thank you for digging up this intriguing bit of research. This is a headscratcher for me because of the nature of my niche. I have to get out my post immediately because I write on topical current events. This kind of thing would be really great to see on your Google Analytics report. I did notice that Indian readers tend to look at my blog late at night as well as throughout the day. I get hits from all around the world at all times so it’s really hard to optimize my publishing time on my blog. Maybe I’ll have better insight into this once my blog matures and grows a little.
Thats very good that your traffic is global. A clear sign of success and appreciation of your work by your visitors. It will really be difficult for you to optimize your publishing time since your traffic come from all over the globe.
Cheers,
Prasenjit.
I guess it’s OK for me to continue posting at any time, then. I think people in India who follow my niche closely get their news from news sites and the TV. I am much more likely to build an audience from overseas and younger Indians who have not previously read much on my niche.
I never actually never considered time of my posts but I guess I should revise that policy and see what happens, for me having email list is helpful too because I notify them via email about new posts so they come whenever they feel comfortable and I still get traffic.
You can actually try to experiment with your publishing time and see if there is any difference. I personally noticed that I get better traffic on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Notifying your subscribers of new posts is anyways a good idea.
I never really thought about this. Interesting post. I’ll experiment on this and see how it goes. Thanks for sharing!
I think, specific time does not effect the blog posting!!!!!
That probably depends from one niche to the other. It affects me however. Thanks for sharing your opinion.