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The Data:

The following graphs are from today, starting from when the public beta started, and with data points plotted "weekly" rather than "daily".

Quantum Computing:

Data on the number of new visits plotted weekly for QuantumComputing.SE, showing a steady increase since the start of the public beta up until the last 2 data points. The last two data points show a sharp drop to about 10% of the last value before.

Matter Modeling:

Weekly plotted new visit data for MatterModeling.SE. Showing a steady increase over the last year with the last two data points showing a sharp decline to about 20% of the last value before.

Physics:

See here, a diamond moderator confirmed that the same thing is happening at Physics.SE, without showing the graph.

Prior Research / Discussions About This:

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Educated guess, by no means official:

We are committing to recategorizing the Google Analytics cookie as a “Performance Cookie” by May 13, 2022.

(source: this answer by staff member @CesarM - the actual switch happened on May 10th)

The site analytics are powered by Google Analytics, and if users don't accept the cookies, they don't get registered as new visits.

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  • 2
    May 13th does seem to be when this trend started, and it's interesting to learn that this is the number of people who did not accept the cookie!
    – user1271772
    May 26, 2022 at 18:21
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    @user1271772 It's not that people chose not to accept them. More likely, many users took no action. With the reclassification, that cookie can only be stored once they confirm to accept it. But a lot of users who would qualify as "new visits" would be from search engines, where they might have loaded the page, looked at it, and then left without ever interacting with the dialog at all.
    – animuson StaffMod
    May 26, 2022 at 18:29
  • 2
    Even better source: this comment meta.stackexchange.com/questions/374897/…
    – Luuklag
    May 26, 2022 at 21:24
  • 1
    @animuson so the cookie dialogue isn't intrusive enough ;)
    – Luuklag
    May 27, 2022 at 7:45
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    @Luuklag Shhh! Don't tell 'em :-D
    – 41686d6564
    May 27, 2022 at 8:29
  • @Luuklag Or people use adblock and filter it out.
    – Federico Poloni
    Feb 8 at 18:09

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