I feel a bit guilty writing this because I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to exploit a tragedy for web traffic.  I’m not.  I feel really sorry about the earthquake, feel sad about the loss of life, and I wish it had not happened.

That said, the February 22 earthquake had a serious impact on the sport community in New Zealand, forcing the cancellation or rescheduling of numerous sporting events including a Super 15 match.  I was further curious as to how the New Zealand sport community responded as it pertains to my research interests.  There are a few ways that I could measure how the community responded.  The problem with Facebook and Twitter data is the population being measured could include many people who are not New Zealanders who might feel sympathetic towards a New Zealand team and either want to follow them or buy merchandise in response.  The best way, with my current data collection, to measure a New Zealand specific response is to look at the New Zealand Alexa rank for websites and see if larger patterns could be found to suggest if New Zealanders turned away from or embraced sport (by looking at sport related webites) in response to the earthquake.  The sample of sites found isn’t as large for New Zealand as it is for Australia, because Alexa only tracks the top 20,000 sites in New Zealand.  If a site has fallen off my chart for a day or two, I’ve given it a rank of 20,001.

Some general conclusions:

• The Saints were the only AFL team to have a New Zealand rank. This likely had to do with the #dickileaks , Ricky Nixon controversy that had reflared recently. New Zealander appeared to stop caring about the St Kilda story after the earthquake.
• It appears interest in the A-League may have slipped some after the earthquake.  This could be because the season is over or because the A-League side from New Zealand is based on Wellington, much closer to the earthquake than Auckland or Australia.
• Athletics New Zealand saw a fairly sizable jump in Alexa ranking.
• Diving New Zealand also saw an improvement in their ranking post earthquake.
• Fox Sports, the Herald Sun and the Age are more general news sites than sport specific sites.  They all saw an improvement in New Zealand ranking post earthquake.
• The NBL saw an increase in its New Zealand rank post earthquake.
• Nga Kaihoe o Aotearoa went from being fairly highly ranked to not being ranked at all post earthquake.
• The Black Caps, who are playing the Cricket World Cup, saw a decline post earthquake.
• With the exception of Ticket Tek and the official Rugby World Cup main site, Rugby World Cup sites saw a decline.  This suggests that Kiwis were possibly concerned about the ticketing situation and how the earthquake would impact the competition, but they weren’t interested in buying merchandise.
• Two Super 15 teams saw an improvement in New Zealand rank post earthquake.  This could be attributed to the fact that the season has begun to get more underway.
• Surf Life Saving New Zealand, Triathlon New Zealand and Volleyball New Zealand also saw an improvement in New Zealand ranking.
• Yachting New Zealand saw a drop off the rankings for New Zealand ranking post earthquake.

One more thing before I present the above data in chart format: The rankings could also be skewed because Alexa users from the Christchurch area may be without electricity and Internet.  In fact, that seems highly likely.  Thus, they aren’t likely to be included in the post earthquake data and users from other parts of the country might have their interests highlighted more because the Christchurch Alexa toolbar users aren’t around to offset that.

Or it could be what I suggest at the beginning of this post: Kiwis were more concerned about some sports than others, to find out how their teams, sports and athletes were impacted in response to earthquake.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 2)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 1)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)

This is mostly just a test so that you can look at historical AFL data from Alexa, play with it and try to use filters to see if the information is useful in this form. I really want to do a great big data dump online but I’m not certain how to present it in order to make it useful for people. Any thoughts would be appreciated.