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ReliefWeb Highlights 2018

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In November 2018, 977,000 users visited ReliefWeb - the highest monthly usage since the site was launched more than 20 years ago.

What this statistic shows is that ReliefWeb remains the “go-to” online platform for humanitarians around the world. Our 24/7 operation and editorial processes ensure that ReliefWeb delivers relevant and reliable information on ongoing crises and timely updates when a disaster strikes. ReliefWeb is also the platform where many humanitarians find career and training opportunities in emergency response and international development.

We regularly analyse the usage of the website and related products to find the best ways to deliver useful content to the humanitarian community. In addition to interviews and surveys, data also informs us about how users use ReliefWeb. Here are some highlights from 2018 usage data:

  • During 2018, more than 9 million users visited ReliefWeb, an increase of 31% from the previous year. The majority (63%) arrived at the site through search engines (mostly from Google, but also from Yahoo and Bing), 7% came from other websites mentioning ReliefWeb and, 4% came from social media channels (mostly Facebook). Many users get to our reports via search engines. We have been working on improving ReliefWeb’s visibility in search engines, so users can find content more easily.

  • Mobile usage continues to grow - Mobile usage on ReliefWeb grew almost 40% from 2017. This follows the global trend of rising usage of mobile technologies. Data also shows that when there is a sudden onset emergency, mobile access to ReliefWeb goes up to 40% of the whole usage. Knowing this, ReliefWeb has been working on making the whole site more easily accessible by mobile devices.

  • ReliefWeb users are as interested in reports (over 13 million reads) as much as they are in jobs (almost 15 million reads). The readership of reports in fact increased by 50% compared to 2017. The organizations with the most-read reports on ReliefWeb were OCHA, the UN Refugee Agency, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration, the World Food Programme, the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent, the Food and Agriculture Organization, ECHO (the European Commission's Department for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations) and The New Humanitarian (formerly IRIN).

  • ReliefWeb is mentioned by 30,000 different domains! (source: SEMRush) That means there are at least that many websites with a link to ReliefWeb or its content.

You can read ReliefWeb reports on Google News for Android and iOS (almost 30,000 users accessed ReliefWeb this way), Apple News for iOS devices, Flipboard for Android and iOS, News360 for Android and iOS and some popular news aggregators, such as newsnow.co.uk.

Our humanitarian partners also mention ReliefWeb reports as a source or they have a link to our homepage. Here are some of the humanitarian partners in the top 200 referral traffic to ReliefWeb: The New Humanitarian (formerly IRIN), the Myanmar Information Management Unit, UN News, the Global CCCM Cluster, Danish Demining Group, the Asian Disaster Reduction Center, Human Rights Watch, Generation 2.0 for Rights, Equality & Diversity, Global Disaster Alerting Coordination system, World Health Organization, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, World Vision, UNHCR, ACAPS and, American Red Cross.

Digital newspapers that reference ReliefWeb as a source include The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Star from Kenya, The Washington Post, El Pais, Forbes, Bloomberg, Vox and the HuffPost.

The ReliefWeb team wishes to thank you, our users, for another successful year, and as always, we welcome your feedback.

Data can provide interesting insights, but can also be dangerous when used improperly. At ReliefWeb, we only track anonymous data in an aggregated way, so there is no way anyone can identify navigation patterns on our website.