Please excuse the harsh Title...but I have to admit that I am happy to see that istock is constantly losing traffic.
Look at this: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=istockphoto.com&sa=N

For me, it is a confirmation that our measurements, boycotts, spreading the word along with istocks very own arrogant and bad management IS HAVING A HUGE EFFECT.

Things take time. We should continue to boycott bad sites. Continue to spread the word. Do not buy anymore on those sites (like me, I switched a whole company from istock to DT) etc....

On the other hand, I notice that some small and newcomer sites are growing constantly. Especially Depositphotos, Veer and GL. Customers are moving.

It clearly shows that a (big) company can NOT do whatever it wants without consequences. In the long run, we will have success...

They do seem to of lost a lot of contributors and buyers.  If like me, people have deleted a lot of links to their site and visit a lot less often, it's no surprise to see a fall in traffic.  Will this hit them financially?  Would that make the other sites more cautious when it comes to lowering commissions and losing buyers?

Every stock site is trending down - this stat by itself isn't very illustrative...

In wonder why this effect is seen on so many huge sites....the financial crisis? Buyers getting bored by the same old concepts?

Alexa.com shows iStock going down but ShutterStock going up. Not sure which stats are correct.

This would correlate with my personal stats...

IS is falling the fastest among the big 4, but FT has the lowest traffic now. This confirms my suspicion that FT might be in serious trouble.

^^^ true.

Ladies and gentlemen, dudes and dudesses... this has been beaten to death already. Traffic doesn't mean sales.

Quote from: ppdd on September 26, 2011, 13:56

Every stock site is trending down - this stat by itself isn't very illustrative...

True and memorial day weekend. On the other hand, didn't someone say last year that sales went up when school was back in session?

Oh wait, traffic doesn't = sales! It's just traffic! 

The whole thread is about IS haters trying to find something to write about. Hey haters, there's no lack of good material, why scrape for factoids and pseudo facts?

Off course I hate istock. Are you a fanboy?

We were denied our daily bitch about istock by the hacker, got to catch up now

hehe, doing my best ;-)

Great stuff!

I am personally doing my best to divert istock members to other sites.. Happy to see I am not alone!

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=istock%2C+dreamstime%2C+fotolia%2C+shutterstock%2C&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0

Search result trend for "istock" "dreamstime" "fotolia" and "shutterstock" during the last year in the biggest market (the US).  Looks pretty steady with IS being searched for twice as often as the others combined. 

The USA might be the biggest single market but it is still a fraction of the whole. If you modify the chart to display 'All Regions' then you get a very different picture. I think most of us count our sales in their entirety, not just the ones from the USA.

Quote from: traveler1116 on September 26, 2011, 15:49

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=istock%2C+dreamstime%2C+fotolia%2C+shutterstock%2C&ctab=0&geo=us&geor=all&date=ytd&sort=0

Search result trend for "istock" "dreamstime" "fotolia" and "shutterstock" during the last year in the biggest market (the US).  Looks pretty steady with IS being searched for twice as often as the others combined.  

The USA might be the biggest single market but it is still a fraction of the whole. If you modify the chart to display 'All Regions' then you get a very different picture. I think most of us count our sales in their entirety, not just the ones from the USA.

I would guess buyers from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia (countries that IS is very strong in) spend much more than buyers from much of Europe spend (where fotolia is strong) and from places where shutterstock is strong (indonesia, india, malaysia).  I think it matters a lot which market you're in.   The biggest advertisers in the world are in the US with the biggest budgets.  I would be a little worried about Shutterstock from looking at the google stats since a lot of their share seems to be from countries with lax copyright protection.  http://trends.google.com/trends?q=shutterstock%2C&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

looking at this traffic graphics we would never see DT over FT on the Poll results, so how accurate it is regarding sales?

Looks like the economic environment plays a certain role here....

brilliant insight, good thing you are here to point this out or where would we be?