Oh and I looked at Compete… yes they show the same trend – but note that they also show a significant spike in engagement for the last month that they track.

Finally, I would not expect a redesign to affect unique visitors. Pageviews per visitor hopefully, but I wouldn’t expect a design change to bring in new people. Drive away old ones perhaps…

That depends if traffic is the measure of success for them. Certainly an upward trend is better than the opposite, but increased traffic is only one way to increase revenues. Increasing the number of visitors who click on a CPC ad will also accomplish this goal even if traffic remains flat. Of course if they’re reliant on CPM ads, pageviews will matter more, but there again increased engagement might help if the pageviews/per vistor number rises.

Oh, and can I ask a favor? Stop using Alexa. Please. Yes, I get that you disclaimed it, but saying “This is crappy inaccurate data… but I’m going to draw conclusions from it” is just inconsistent. Your point might be good – or Alexa could be drastically wrong and we’re discussing a phenomenon that isn’t real. Given Alexa’s known bias due to how they gather data you simply can’t use them to talk about general population behavior. Stating that you realize this.. but then proceeding to do so anyway just undermines the point.

I don’t think that major news sites are suffering a decline because they all employ terrible reporters (but I do think they’re biased). I think it’s probably an indicator of a slow paradigm shift.

But I don’t think that USA Today redesigned their site to improve the world or increase participation out of the goodness of their hearts. You’re right that USA Today is more than just a website—they’re a business. The bottom line is money whether that’s through selling offline subscriptions or online subscriptions (which are often rated based on traffic coming to the site).

The effort might be a success to us in that it’s gotten people who might not normally participate online to do so, but if it’s not really profiting USA Today, it won’t last very long.

Don’t forget that we are not talking about Search Engine Land or Marketing Pilgrim here. They are much more than a website.

Why are you assuming that their diminishing popularity can be reversed with a site redesign? Maybe they have terrible reporters, biased coverage, etc. And if others like CNN and MSNBC have the same problem, maybe it is just the diminishing popularity of big brand media in general.

So if we don’t assume that USA Today has redesigned the site to improve its overall fortunes than we can safely say the new design brought improved participation online, and therefore is a success.