this data might be wrong

Screenshot of [Ayhan Fuat Çelik's "The Fall of Stack Overflow" on Observable](https://observablehq.com/@ayhanfuat/the-fall-of-stack-overflow) omitted. The graph in question has since been updated.

\@natfriedman via Twitter on Jul 26, 2023

Why the precipitous sudden decline in early 2022? That first cliff has nothing to do with ChatGPT.

I also think this data might be wrong. Doesn't match SimilarWeb visit data at all

Extensive discussion in replies may be of interest, including the below:

\@StackOverflow via Twitter on Jul 26, 2023

You are correct here. This graph on SO traffic is outdated and inaccurate. Apologies, when we changed how we measure and report on traffic - we didn’t update or add context to this page (since May 10, 2022). We are currently working to resolve the issue.

\@dtran320 via Twitter on Jul 26, 2023

Was poking around at this. SO Staff member Catija mentions a cookie tracking change that rolled out in April/May 2022, so that could explain what's counted as a "visit" from http://stackoverflow.com/site-analytics vs. SimilarWeb's extrapolated data that doesn't depend on cookie consent

Link: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/391624/correlation-between-ai-generated-content-and-the-demise-of-se-so/391625#comment1309277_391625

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\@johannes_wachs via Twitter on Jul 26, 2023

Some colleagues and I have been studying the impact of ChatGPT on SO using data on posts, not views: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07367](https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07367)

Besides a big decrease after ChatGPT, we observe a completely flat 2022, and earlier a big bump in activity during early Covid.

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