More traffic. But is it more impact?

BASED ON PUBLICLY AVAILABLE READINGOCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data

Web Traffic, AI Bots and Open Data · Kasia Chmielinski

Source published: 18 March 2026

Read the original at OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data

The signal worth noticing

The Centre for Humanitarian Data describes how automated traffic has made it harder to understand who uses HDX. It reports pressure on infrastructure and explains why pageviews alone are becoming less useful. Its team is exploring patterns of meaningful activity, such as searching for a dataset and then downloading it.

The AIHI perspective

For a purpose-led organisation, a busier website is only useful if it helps more people take a meaningful next step. A donor completing a donation, a programme team finding a relevant resource and a partner making an enquiry are different outcomes. They deserve different measures. Treat a rise in visits as a question to investigate before presenting it as improved engagement.

Start with one decision

Choose a decision your reporting should inform: which content to improve, where people abandon an enquiry, or whether a resource helps its intended audience. Agree the smallest set of events that would answer it. Work with your technical and privacy leads to distinguish useful activity from automated requests, using proportionate data collection.

Make the operational cost visible

Someone should own unexpected traffic, service reliability and the meaning of your dashboard numbers. Review those together. A reporting change that helps a team make a better decision can be more valuable than another headline chart.

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