Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Finding an Explanation for a Massive Spike in Organic Search Traffic
-
Hi,
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason. The organic search engine traffic had always been steady, but about two months ago, organic search traffic started rising slowly.
I checked OSE & a few other tools, but couldn't find any massive source of gained links or other explanations - just the usual occasional blog post about the company. I got in touch with my friend to see if maybe they'd gone with a competitor or something else, but he also had no idea (and even if he wasn't being honest with me, we still should've been able to spot links or social metrics or something!)
Then, yesterday, their organic search traffic just tripled. The crazy thing is, it's not from one keyword: Every search term, and (not provided) essentially went up 200-400%. And I have no freaking idea why. No large gain of links. No website editing. The only possible explanation I thought up is maybe one of their competitors got knocked out, but I doubt that would cause such a stratospheric rise.
So figured I'd turn to y'all. Any ideas on what might be causing such wonderful results? Anyone have any good tips on figuring out why a website could all of a sudden be doing incredibly? Analytics chart is below for the curious, and thanks in advance for any ideas / tips!
-
Your traffic seems to have increased around the time of the big Panda update around the 21st August. Looks like (in contrast with your competitors) you were doing something right.
You might like to keep an eye on this chart: http://www.rankranger.com/rank-risk-index which I find gives a nice overview of the serp fluctuations.
-
Maybe in GA, just under where you got that chart from, click "Source" and then plot out the different search engines to validate where that extra traffic is coming from. My assumption if you are seeing all the keywords rise and not sudden traffic from one or a few new keywords is that maybe you just started ranking in one engine across the board? Like maybe all the steady traffic you were seeing before was all from Bing but suddenly Google started blessing the site? I know that doesn't answer your question but at least will eliminate some of the possibilities.
Also, the sources you mention for looking for new backlinks take a while to update (like OSE). So new links wouldn't be showing up in there yet. You might want to look in your traffic sources > referrers report in GA to see if there are some new links in there that you didn't know about before. Or if the total number of unique referrers has increase comparing two time frames? Might be a needle in a haystack but just one more place to look.
Good luck!
-
It's hard to say exactly what the cause is without knowing what the site/keywords are, but I'd recommend checking if these are all New Visits and/or Unique Visitors and where they are geographically located. I've seen huge spikes in traffic by the same group of people/computers in foreign countries before who were hitting my site over and over for some unknown reason. Also, check which search engine is sending the traffic, which landing pages they visited first, etc.
And of course, this spike could be legit, especially if your site ranks for keywords related to a particular topic that happened to get a lot of searches yesterday (breaking news, a controversial report debunking commonly held belief, viral video, etc).
-
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason.
Try digging a little deeper into the analytics.
If you are looking at his analytics you should be able to see where those visitors were coming from on that day... also pages that they entered and lots more. The answers are just a few clicks away.
-
From those analytics, it almost looks like he started his website in Jan 2013... if that is the case, it can take some time to establish authority and ranking. If your rankings increased, then it makes sense that your traffic would also increase.
For a site that I optimized, we saw some immediate results; however, after 3 months of building up authority, rankings shot up and so did traffic.
It is tough to say exactly what is causing that... looks like you must have done something good : )
Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics
Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg
Reporting & Analytics | | lmoraes0 -
Impressions clicks and traffic drop
Hello,
Reporting & Analytics | | SharonEKG
So something weird is going on, i run a few websites for clients, few different CMS. there has been a constant increase in traffic and ranking on one wordpress website and now the squarespace website is climbing up in rankings in the past few months. both has GTM installed for months, which has been optimized regularly.
for the wordpress website, in the past 2 weeks, starting June 4th, on google search console the clicks and impressions has started going down to the point that i lost 90% of clicks and impressions and traffic on analytics has started dropping a few days later, now at about 60% less traffic. for the Squarespace website, exactly the same thing, started June 7th and drop in clicks/impressions (though ranking increase) and then traffic drop. checked both GTM for recent changes incase of wrong code implement, no changes, no new major issues.
different hostings different CMS, no link between them. i just cant put my finger what is going on. anyone got any idea what is going on?0 -
How to track google auto search suggestion click?
Hello Guys, In google.co.uk when I search SEL and google gives me option of different different sites and when I click on any one site then that click tracking I need. I have attached the screenshot to understand easily. Is it possible to track such things or possible via server logs etc? TV99h
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1231 -
Seeing massive spikes in direct traffic with 100% bounce rates
Hi all, Looking through Analytics yesterday, I saw that my website had a huge increase in direct traffic in sessions. However, they apparently spent 0 seconds on the website in total so that raised plenty of red flags. Does anyone have reasons why this might be? Spam or bug? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Whittie0 -
Referral Traffic from Google
Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO1 -
Is there a way to find out who the admin of a Google Analytics account is?
We have a client who has been searching high and low to gain access to the GA account that is tied to their website, but previous agencies keep stating they don't have access. Is there a way to find out who the admins are on a GA account with the tracking number so we can reach out to that person and ask them to admin the client?
Reporting & Analytics | | marketingmediamanagement0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
How can i see queries what my visitors are searching for, in my website?
Google analytics installed, but they are not showing. What additional things should i add there? I need to see most popular search queries and add more content to these pages for panda.
Reporting & Analytics | | bele0