With the imposition of the global quarantine, the way of the world’s Internet traffic has been significantly transformed. To understand how the demand for and consumption of content has changed, we studied our clients’ traffic and tracked differences by region and industry for February and April 2020.
The largest increase in traffic in April was observed in Europe and North America as lockdowns were announced between mid-February and mid-March, depending on the region and country.
The slight increase in traffic in Asia was due to the fact that the epidemic started in the region in January, and by April, most countries had already returned to their previous way of life.
In Africa and the CIS countries traffic consumption remained at the same level due to the fact that the lockdown was introduced in early April.
Region | Traffic volume |
CIS | +4 % |
Europe | +18 % |
North America | +33 % |
Asia | +9 % |
Latin America | +12 % |
Industry | Region | Traffic volume |
Gaming | North America | +47,6 % |
Europe | +51,3 % | |
E-commerce | North America | −15,7 % |
Europe | +8,22 % | |
Media and entertainment | North America | +48,5 % |
Europe | +67,2 % |
To cope with the sharp jump in traffic, popular streaming and video hosting services reduced the quality of content for their users, while others ordered additional equipment for the crisis.
Internet users around the world have been visiting news and entertainment portals, playing online games, and self-studying more frequently. At the same time, interest in online shopping and financial tools dropped.
Industry | Traffic volume |
Gaming | +41 % |
E-commerce | −16,5 % |
Media and entertainment | +48 % |
Finance | −15 % |
Education | +85 % |
Dmitry Samoshkin
“Millions of people all over the world have switched to remote work, stayed at home, and started using online services more actively. It stands to reason that web traffic has also increased. We urgently purchased additional equipment and increased the capacity of our products: CDN, Hosting, and Cloud. Summing up the initial results, it is safe to say that the coronavirus has changed the volumes and patterns of consumption and distribution of content on the Internet”
Dmitry Samoshkin