We’re five hours away from what might be the first government shutdown since 1995. Therefore it comes as no surprise that people are checking Isthegovernmentshutdown.com and that the site, created by WSJ editor Zach Seward to keep us posted on the furlough’s status, would experience a spike in traffic.
What does come as a surprise is that a good number of the visits came in through the House of Representatives ISP, pushing the congressional body, which also happens to be the battleground that might instigate the shutdown, into the top ten service providers on Google Analytics. Other government agencies like the Senate, the Navy, Homeland Security, the Justice Department and Health and Human Services were also in the top 50 in terms of referral traffic.
Seward registered the Isthegovernmentshutdown.com domain on February 25th “when the specter of a shutdown was first raised” but didn’t set it up as a Ismubarakstillpresident.com-type single serving site until this week. The site has received over 33K views since Monday, 473 from House of Representatives IPs.
And in case you have a theory that’s it’s all one obsessed government employee hitting refresh, 80% of those HofR visits are new. Discuss.
