Shopping comparison site referral traffic growth
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Over the last 12 months we have been working with affiliates and seen excellent traffic and revenue growth from this channel (golf market). Over the same period we have seen a massive (60%) drop in organic traffic and 40% drop in organic revenue. Our rankings are comparable to last year. However we are seeing growth in Googlebase traffic and direct traffic
Is it the case that consumers are using comparison sites more that organic search queries. Is there any evidence to support this view if true? Having content on affiliate sites, could it be harming us organically (but as I say or rankings are comparable to last year - maybe a little worse since Panda updates).
Confused? I am...
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Well if your maintaining the same keyword positions but seeing less traffic it could be less search this year, changes to your meta descriptions which have messed your CTR up, ppc ads for those terms more competitive therefore better offers in the ads (discount codes etc).
Can you say one of the keywords you are ranking for which has not moved but you have seen a decrease in traffic for?
If an affiliate gets crawled more often then you, you might find when you add new products or content which is inside of your datafeed (networks pull this every 24 hours) and the affiliate does say a cron job on your feed every couple hours they could have your content picked up before you.
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