I don't think there really was a mass exodus. Not seriously. Google Trends there was a spike in interest but 100 searches? Really? Its not even a blip. Unless I don't know how to drive that google trends thing.
That's not how Google Trends works. The 100 is a relative index to the volume of searches over time. It's to compare how many people Googled a term at one point in time compared to others. When it says 100, it doesn't mean that 100 people searched it, it means that that was when the search volume was at its highest. So, in reality, it was the biggest day of all time for those search terms. If you want to look at actual numbers, there's always Google Adwords. There's a problem with this, though. The numbers only go up to May of 2015 for some reason. Here's a link to my search. Here's a screen shot of the page, if that doesn't work. It's safe to say that there definitely was a desire for Reddit Alternatives this week. I guess we'll have to wait a while for the exact number of searches, howeve . there was a spike in interest but 100 searches?
Most of Reddit knows about voat - there were multiple frontpage posts about it. So, if voat was open, the migration (however short it may have lasted) would have probably been much more visible. There was also a very popular thread about alternatives, as well as an entire subreddit for it (/r/redditalternatives) - Redditors really had no need to google it. So I don't think search trends are a very accurate estimate of how many would have left in the right circumstances.
Yes. We had one reddit influx a while ago was due to a mention of "hubski" without a link in a top comment on a top askhubski post. The influx was remarkably smaller than any others that we have had, even though the visibility of the post and comment was higher than most (if not all) of the links we have had on reddit. However, traffic we got from google searches for hubski was insane whereas when people link, the user comes directly from reddit and the number of people who show up is so much higher. Redditors really had no need to google it.
I think it wasn't underrated at all for voat's servers. They really took a pounding when put it side by side next to reddit alternatives. There was a link shared to reddit that got bombarded, then crashed the servers, then making everyone return with no where else to go.
Turns out I don't know how the google trends thing works. "100" is "peak search interest". It's a maximum. It's not an actual count of the number of searches.