A report by Nielsen/Net Ratings on the site view changes in February shows most of the popular cooking (recipes) sites had a large increase in site views. 3 of them had more than 30% increase in site view from January, and most of the increase came from female between 20-50.
Why? It’s the Valentine’s Day.
Unfortunately (for women, and fortunately for men), Valentine’s Day is a day for women to give gifts (usually chocolate… it’s not about love, it’s about how we can make chocolate companies richer…) to men in Japan. The original idea was for a woman to give a chocolate to someone who she loves, but now it’s more like a Halloween (without costume, I hope) that every woman and girl gives chocolate to every man in sight (family, friends, colleague, bosses, teachers, etc.)
The 3 sites, which had a huge increase in female visitor in February all had Valentine’s Day special chocolate and other cooking pages. Also, they all had inbound links from popular web portals Valentine’s Day pages such as Yahoo!’s “Valentine’s Day Special”.
So, popular portals with Valentine’s Day special articles directed traffic to cooking sites with recipes for Valentine’s Day cooking. I’d love to put an ad on the recipe pages, if I were the company selling tools and ingredients used in recipes.
Now, Japanese women are not so unfortunate after all. We have a “White Day” in March, when men give gifts to women. I wonder what type of websites had an increase in male visitors in March. Tiffany would be nice. 🙂
Motoko Hunt
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