Updated: Live Blogging the Analytics Dashboard on #TaxDay

Apr 14, 2015

2 a.m. EDT, April 16

Looks like the traffic peak for #TaxDay was around 3:00 pm when 194,301 people were on government sites. We’re now less than one-quarter of that traffic, and the more regular patterns of top sites are reasserting themselves. We’re talking about YOU, NASA astronomy picture of the day and that wonderful one-armed spiral galaxy. Welcome back!

And, it’s a wrap. Thanks for following along as we explored a day in the federal web.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 2 am EDT, Apr 16): 41,865

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 10

Fun Facts:

  • We’re starting to see less traffic per hour than we did yesterday at this same time.
  • Let us know other events that you’d like to follow in the future. Remember that analytics.usa.gov always displays the pulse of federal public web users.

-gk, Digital Government, GSA

1 a.m. EDT, April 16

Traffic continues to decrease as the April 15th tax filing deadline fades into the rear-view mirror. People on government sites continue to be interested in tax resources. In other news, there was a 3.2 earthquake near Pacioma, Calif, north of Los Angeles, as reflected by a new page flitting up and out of the Top 20 this hour.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 1 a.m. EDT, Apr 16): 57,042

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 14

Fun Facts:

  • ”Where’s My Refund” continues to be a top page (#2 now) into the early morning hours. Hope that these aren’t the people that just filed an hour ago.
  • The U.S. Geological Survey uses crowdsourcing to capture data on the impact of earthquakes. Learn more about their DYFI (Did You Feel It?) research.-gk, Digital Government, GSA

Midnight EDT, April 16

Hitting the midnight filing deadline on the East Coast finds pages on the top of the list all about more time! Like Form 4868 (AKA “Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File”) and a page with information on tax filing extensions (AKA “Topic 304”). Nine of the top ten pages right now are on IRS.GOV.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of Midnite EDT, Apr 16): 82,637

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 16

Fun Facts:

  • Folks in other time zones still have time to postmark their returns by midnight. Check out the U.S. Postal Service site to find Post Office locations that are open late to postmark tax returns.
  • It doesn’t look like we hit DAP Program Manager Marina Fox’s prediction of 300,000 realtime views. We’ll ask for her post-game analysis tomorrow._-gk, Digital Government, GSA

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11:00 pm Update

Traffic on IRS.gov webpages continues to be brisk at this time as 16 of its pages are among the government’s Top 20, with eight of them at the very top. Also placing on the top 20 are two National Weather Service pages, MyUSCIS Case Status and USAjobs.gov‘s Application Manager page.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 11 pm): 105,067

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 16

Fun Facts:

  • Two IRS app pages are currently on the Top 20.
  • You’re not alone tax traffic lovers. We’ve got you covered until midnight on the West Coast. -Coqui Aspiazu_

10:00 Update

IRS websites still make up 15 of the top 20 sites on analytics.usa.gov. Employees at all federal government agencies are working hard to improve customer service, so you have a great experience when you look on the web, call us, or chat online. When citizens have a good customer experience, statistics from Forrester Research show that they are proud of their country and optimistic about its future. Check out our articles this month. The theme is “How Federal Contact Centers Deliver Great Customer Service.”

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 10:14 pm): 118,570

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 15-Karen Trebon, Assistant Director, Digital Government Division

9:00 Update

It’s 9:00 pm, do you know where your refund is? Well now it’s easy to check on the go with the IRS2Go app. IRS2Go lets taxpayers check on the status of their tax refund and obtain helpful tax information. If you’re e-filing, you can check your refund status within about 24 hours after the IRS confirms receipt of your tax return.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 8:50 pm): 122,019

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 15-Alycia Piazza, DigitalGov Platform Manager

8:00 pm Update

As the West Coast gets out of work the IRS is in total control of the Top 20 government sites being visited at the moment with 15 sites. And in a late surge, Get Your Electronic Filing Pin took over the top of the board from Where’s My Refund for the first time today. So all procrastinators out there rejoice! You are not alone.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 8 pm): 122,677

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 15

Fun Fact:

  • Government websites received more than 18 million visits until 8 pm today.-Coqui Aspiazu, Sites

7:00 pm Update

Even though the Where’s My Refund? page continues leading all government traffic (3,315 visits), those looking for an extension are outpacing them with 3,883 visits divided among those looking for Form 4868, reading about the three ways to request an automatic extension of time, and Extension of Time to File Your Tax Return, which provides information about extensions for individual, corporations and others.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 7 pm): 128,295

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 15

Fun Fact:

  • Government websites had received more than 16 million visits until 5 pm today (more on that at 8 pm).-Coqui Aspiazu, Sites

6:00 pm Update

If you’ve been following the Analytics Dashboard today, you may have noticed “Application Manager” as one of the top 20 sites throughout the day. This page is the log-in for USAjobs.gov, one of the domains that is consistently in the top 20; you can check out the 7 day and 30 day views to see where it compares to other highly trafficked domains!

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 5:55 pm): 145,742

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13

Fun Facts:

  • There were 21 million visits to IRS pages over the past 7 days.-Ashley Wichman, DigitalGov Team

A screen capture of a bar graph, showing that there were 163,502 people visiting government websites.

5:00 pm Update

Although the overall number of visitors to government websites has decreased since the early afternoon peak, IRS websites have now taken over the top 5 of the Analytics dashboard.

We’ll be continuing our updates throughout the evening and into the night, as the filing deadline gets closer and closer. Will we see an uptick in visits during the final hours? Or, have most people wrapped up their to-do lists for the day?

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 5:04 pm): 163,502

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 14

Fun Facts:

  • Not everyone waits until April 15th to file: the IRS had already received over 99 million returns on April 3rd, according to the IRS website. This accounts for 2 out of 3 taxpayers.-Ashley Wichman, DigitalGov Team

4:00 pm Update

Did you know that the IRS was an early technology adopter? They first used computers in 1955 to help process over 1 million returns. By 1967 all returns were processed by computers.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 3:55 pm): 182,574

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13

Fun Facts:

3:00 pm Update

In the coming months, the public dashboard will be expanding its reach to report more meaningful metrics across additional dimensions.

To give you a quick taste of what type of information you could get, we are reporting that 90% of the traffic on government websites right now at 3pm ET is coming from the United States, with New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles leading the way. Trending as the # 1 pdf download across the government websites is the IRS’s Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return [PDF] with more than 5,000 people currently downloading the form. More to come on this one as we continue to think through and enhance analytics.usa.gov reporting.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 2:58pm): 194,301

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13-Marina Fox, Manager, Digital Analytics Program

2:00 pm Update

The number of real time users is inching closer and closer to 200,000 people. When will we see the surge that hits this mark? This might be our big question of the day, but we see that more than 2,000 people are likely concerned with another question: “What is the weather going to be like today?”

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 1:55 pm): 190,622

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13

Fun Facts:

1:00 pm Update

People are finishing up lunch and still working on their taxes!

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 12:58pm): 186,797

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13

Fun Facts:

Noon Update

It’s noon on tax day and the number of people on government websites has more than doubled since we started monitoring at 7:58 this morning.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of Noon): 187,930

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 13

Fun Facts:

  • There are 1,935 people getting their electronic filing pin. I wonder how many of those views are from people on the East Coast filing during their lunch break? Rumor has it that our Thursday Mobile Product blogger Kevin Downey was one of the people on that page earlier.
  • While IRS web traffic is the name of the game today, this month’s DigitalGov theme is Contact Centers. I can imagine the IRS contact center is getting a lot of phone calls today.
  • I asked the USA.gov Contact Center Team about contact center impact this morning, and they said that IRS information calls are a hot topic year round. On average, IRS topics are 16% of the 1-844-USA-GOV1 (1-844-872-4681) total volume. Top IRS topics include tax form requests, tax fraud verification, tax scams and tax refund questions.-Jacob Parcell, Manager, Mobile Programs

11:00 am Update

As expected, the number of people on government website is steadily increasing as we get further into the day. People are getting things done today, including their taxes!

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 10:58 am): 185,676

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 12

Fun Facts:

  • There are currently 2,314 people visiting IRS.gov’s “Forms and Publications” page to find the necessary forms to file their taxes. Can we say “down to the wire?”
  • Did you know that IRS.gov is beta testing a new search box on the “Forms and Publications” page, powered by DigitalGov Search?-Kendrick Daniel, DigitalGov Team

10:00 am Update

Business is booming as we really get rolling on the biggest tax day of the year. We can see another huge jump in total users and across IRS pages.

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 9:58 am): 168,671

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 11

Fun Facts:

  • There are currently 3,297 people on pages related to filing for an extension of the tax deadline.
  • Although today is the last day to file taxes, the top IRS page remains the “Where’s My Refund” page with 4,448 active visitors looking to find out when they’ll receive their refund.
  • Despite IRS dominating the top traffic over the last few months, the usual top performers are weather pages from NOAA, which still has 4 pages in the Top 20 right now. Along with NOAA and IRS, the DAP program has participating sites from 38 federal agencies!-Tim Lowden, Analyst on the Digital Analytics Program
A screen capture of a bar graph, showing that there were 130,929 people visiting government websites.

9:00 am Update

People are waking up, getting their coffee, and going on government websites. If you weren’t one of the 130,000 people on a government website a few minutes ago, you are on one now!

The Stats:

Number of people on government websites (as of 8:58 am): 130,929

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 10

Fun Facts:

  • Over the past 90 days, 31.9% of visitors have accessed government websites via mobile devices or tablets. Our team writes about mobile trends every Tuesday, so take a peek and learn how federal agencies are becoming future-ready.
  • In fact, while we are talking about the IRS, IRS2Go was recently updated and is available on Android and iOS.
  • There were 581,281 visits to government websites at midnight (Eastern time, early this morning). Were you one of the night owls?-Ashley Wichman, DigitalGov Team

8:00 am Update

Good morning, and Happy #TaxDay!

It’s nearing 8:00 am at DigitalGov headquarters in Washington, DC, and there are more than 90,000 people on government websites right now. There is a lot of excitement for today. As we mentioned earlier, Marina Fox, manager of the Digital Analytics Program, is guessing that real-time users could hit 300,000 today, smashing the current record of 200,000.

We’ll be bringing hourly updates throughout the day and into the evening. Here’s a quick glance at what is happening right now. All of the data we are referencing is from the Analytics Dashboard.

The Stats

Number of people on government websites (as of 7:58 am): 90,174

Number of IRS pages that are in the Top 20 pages: 10

Fun Facts:

  • 423 people are currently looking at the IRS “Direct Pay” page.
  • IRS.gov has been the most visited government domain over the past 7 and 30 days.

Do you have questions for the DAP or DigitalGov team? Leave a comment below, or give us a shout-out on Twitter, @Digital_Gov using the #TaxDay hashtag._-Ashley Wichman, DigitalGov Team

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First Posting: April 14

Join us at 8:00 am tomorrow as we live blog the action on the public analytics dashboard. Marina Fox, manager of the Digital Analytics Program thinks the real-time users could hit 300,000 (the current record stands just at 200,000). We will be posting hourly updates throughout the day and into the evening. We’ll also be active on our Twitter, @Digital_Gov, with the hashtag #TaxDay.

Apr 14, 2015