who have run websites through several christmases. Did you notice your traffic going down? If so, when does start to gow down and by how much? I am talking about your overall traffic.
So, you are saying some sites may not experience a fall in traffic, or that the rate of fall will vary depending on the niche?
To a certain degree yes. Some sites hire seo only for Christmas time or hire for more extensive work during that time which can throw your rankings off. Also sites or more likely to link to a christmas site during that time of year so when all those links start popping up all over they can over-rank you pretty fast. Again it depends on the niche. If you focus alot of effort on long tail you won't see this happen to you. I haven't had any trouble to be honest.
I'm saying some sites will fall a lot, some a little, some will stay the same, some will grow a little, and some will grow a lot.
is there any other way? MSN and yahoo! are like that to because if one site is #1 another site must be further down. And the next further down and so on.
My clients see a large increase in traffic...but that could be because they have gift and gift related sites
Next time you ask a question, let the webmaster decide, if it's a question for him to answer. Experience or No experience. Back to your Question, Last year and the year before, I received a hike in traffic during Christmas. The site was an affiliate web store of a gift shopping site that my uncle owned. The site was one good optimised site though. It ranked for Christmas terms. As also, I heavily adwordised it. The aim though, was not to get a hike in traffic but a hike in sale. And mind you, the sales were almost 400% of the previous time around Christmas 2004 and about 300% in Christmas 2005. Again, Christmas is fun time. People tend to take breaks during Christmas. They go on Vacations or to meet their Uncles and Aunts and Parents. So you may see a fall in traffic if your site lies in a General niche. Yet again there are possibilities of kids and teens who log on since they get huuuuuuuuuge Holidays. Hope you get the scenario! Tip of the Thread - If you run Adsense or any other form of Contextual Advertising on your sites, make sure to go about posting Christmas related content. Not only a mere Merry Christmas, but also maybe a talk about History of it, about Santa Claus, about gifts, candies and stuff. And see the hike in CPC Cheers