Hacker News Reader

Comment by rjvir | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that in the 2 year period since Amazon bought Twitch, their search interest via Google has been stagnant.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=2014-08-25%202016...

View on HN

Also worth noting that all the gaming console users have Twitch integrated and won't be going to Google to find it

The graph is relative.

The idea is that Twitch viewership is correlated with Google searches - not that Google search is responsible for all Twitch traffic.

and I'm telling you why the correlation could decouple making your data point meaningless

So have "Google" and "Amazon." Most people do not search these terms to get to the website and we know Amazon and Google have been doing well in the last two years.

twitch is twitch. Who really searches for Twitch, instead of just visiting the site and searching for content there?

That proportion is not too relevant for this graph. The graph is relative.

Even if a only a small percentage of Twitch users use Google search to access Twitch, the graph would be somewhat indicative of it's growth.

The question is: does the probability that a given user accesses Twitch over Google search go down as the user uses Twitch more often? Does it so more than on other sites, maybe because regular twitch use promotes other ways of engagement (phone app, console app, email notifications, twitter links from the streamers, etc)?

If 90% of new Twitch users reach Twitch over Google, 30% of one week old users and only 5% of one month old users, then a flat graph could actually indicate growth.

Hmm, this is interesting, for FB as a comparison:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=facebook

Yep, corresponds almost perfectly with the rise of their mobile app.

People who have just heard of twitch and want to know what it is? And whether those people eventually become twitch customers or not, their existence is a sign that twitch is still gaining mindshare in the broader community.

Do you not know seemingly endless amounts of people who visit every site by googling the name?

interesting, but as others have pointed out, it doesn't show us anything we can form conclusions from. It's just an interesting coincidence or correlation.

more concerning for Google than for Twitch I'm afraid :/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com