In 2020, the sheer volume of information published on ReliefWeb relating to the Covid-19 pandemic prompted us to address half-yearly analytics but we missed out on doing so last year. With the increase in content due to the war in Ukraine, however, we decided to take another look at the user numbers and they are indeed impressive - up 12 percent on 2021 to almost 11 million for the first half of 2022.
Equally interesting is where those increases in user numbers originated - a direct correlation with crises. Take Madagascar and Ukraine - in both cases, the number of users rocketed - by 110 percent for Madagascar and by 103 percent for Ukraine. Malawi, Syria and Haiti also showed significant increases, reflecting the tropical cyclones Gombe and Ana that afflicted both Madagascar and Malawi early this year, ongoing crises in Syria exacerbated by drought, and continuing response to the August 2021 earthquake in Haiti.
Another highlight was an all-time spike in user numbers to 2.5 million in March 2022 and a peak of 191,000 users on March 24, along with 400,000 page views the same day - exactly a month from the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine.
The most popular countries visited were those with UN Humanitarian Response Plans: Madagascar, Ukraine, Malawi, Syria and Haiti. In addition, countries bordering on Ukraine (Poland, Czechia and Hungary) showed a huge increase in user numbers, as did Mauritius, possibly because of its proximity to Madagascar.
The number of desk-top sessions increased by 12 percent, to 56 percent, while mobile sessions made up 43 percent of the total. So it stands to reason that user engagement is more significant on a desk top than mobile, reflected in job applications and downloading of pdfs, among others.
The US reclaimed its position as top user country, beating the Philippines back into second place with 1,578,120 users versus 1,273,755. India (574,117) came third, followed by the UK (465,145) and South Africa (448,223).
Job postings showed a healthy recovery on 2021, with a 25 percent increase to 26,806, although training listings were still down by five percent.
Better news came from the field, where the number of users increased by five percent to a little more than 3.5 million. The number of users accessing the reports section topped nine million, up 10 percent on the first half of 2021; for jobs the figure was just over one million.
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