In fact,research suggeststhat 25% of global internet users now employ a VPN to secure their connection.
for better understand the VPN market,we examined the traffic for vpnMentors top 20 VPN providers.
We are sharing this information in the hope that VPN providers can find new avenues for growth.
What Are the vpnMentor Top 20?
It should be noted, however, thatthe popularity of a website (i.e.
its global ranking) does not necessarily indicate the popularity of a product.
Yes, many sites gain new visitors by having their product recommended by happy customers.
However,there are plenty of other reasons for high volume traffic.
These include brand recognition, large advertising budgets, and quality SEO marketing approaches.
From the rankings,we dont actually know how many visits led to downloaded VPNs.
Furthermore,global rankings dont factor in bounce rates.
(These will be discussed in more detail below.)
It should also be noted that the global rankings do not correlate with vpnMentors ranking.
Number of Visits
The table below presents the number of visits to each website during March 2018.
Where we start seeing differences is in howvisitor numbers have changed during the past six months.
From this, we can analyze what may have caused a sudden spike or decline in traffic.
Three VPN providers stand out.
The first isProton VPN, which peaked in January 2018.
This coincides with the launch of its free Android app, which was likely responsible for the spike.
Therefore, even a small increase in the number of visitors to the site results in significant change.
In this case, the spike occurred in tandem with a Christmas sale.
Traffic Sources
SaferVPNs December leap can be better understood when examining the graph below.
Here we see that far more than the other VPNs in December 2017, SaferVPN invested in display advertising.
Display advertising has been around for nearly 25 years, with banner ads making their first appearance in 1994.
This is probably why most VPN providers allocate relatively few resources to display ads.
It should be noted, however, thatSaferVPN wasnt the only VPN to offer a holiday deal.
In fact, with the exception of VPN99 and VPNUnlimited, all of our top 20 did.
The only VPN besides SaferVPN to offer monthly deals under three dollars was CyberGhost.
And in fact, March actually had the fewest visitor numbers of that period.
However, because other data was incomplete, we believe this to be inconclusive.
That said, traffic sources for VPNUnlimited appear to have diversified by March 2018.
When you pay for search results, however, its easy to land on page one.
Every time a visitor clicks on a paid link, it costs the company money.
Consequently, for most websites, the lower the bounce rate, the better.
In this case, the fact that theyre bouncing is an indicator of the websites success.
This means that while many people came to the website,many also left before downloading the VPN.
This can be one of the effects of display advertising.
Or especially in the case of pop-up ads users could even click accidentally.
Despite this, for VPNs,traffic from YouTube far exceeds traffic from Facebook.
This is likely because YouTube is well-known for its tutorials and reviews.
For the remaining providers, Reddit brings in the most traffic.
Moreover, Reddit is a platform thats likely to be inhabited by those who value anonymity.
Although Facebook doesnt bring in as much traffic as Youtube or Reddit, it does generate some visits.
This probably indicates less about Facebooks usefulness with respect to VPNs than it does about the platforms ubiquity.
If youre looking to increase traffic via social media,its best to use YouTube rather than another platform.
However, the results from March 2018 show something very different.
One answer could be a lack of knowledge.
Price is likely a factor that prevents people in the most censored countries from signing up for VPN services.
If this were the case, it would follow that free VPNs would be more popular in these countries.
For instance,AstrillVPN is known to be extremely popular in China.
Therefore, the above graph should not be taken as an indicator of global VPN use in general.
Similarly, VPN99 is Russian, although the reason for its popularity with Finland is less clear.
Perhaps the VPN was simply adopted by certain Finnish influencers and then spread by word of mouth.
Overall, its very clear thatEnglish speaking countries dominate when it comes to buying VPNs.
In fact, evenVPN providers that translate into other languages dont actually see much benefit from it.
With this data, its difficult to determine how to tap into non-English speaking markets.
However, it is clear thatproviding translations is not a very efficient allocation of resources.
Drastic Changes in the VPN Market
The VPN market is ever evolving.
By looking at Google Trends, we can spot how different VPNs have taken over the market.
Over the past few years, the most popular VPNs have been ExpressVPN and PIA.
Yet, by September 2016, ExpressVPN took the lead.
PIA remained static and then gradually lost traction.
However, the mid-size VPNs, such as PrivateVPN and SaferVPN, demonstrate an evolution as well.
It seems that SaferVPNs deals, discounts, and display advertising pays off in terms of generating traffic.
Conclusions
A number of conclusions can be drawn from the above analysis.
Your data is exposed to the websites you visit!
Visit ExpressVPN
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