Help needed - traffic reduced by half for no apparent reason - not sure what to do
-
My client site, https://www.helpinhearing.co.uk/ - has regularly been showing traffic of between 1000 & 1500 sessions per month. I've just looked at their Analytics for September and the sessions have dropped to just over 600! And not only was there a period of around 11 days from September 19th onwards when there was either zero traffic or 1 or 2 visits, but also from October 4th to today (8th Oct) also no visits at all. This has never happened and we've managed this website for several years now. I cannot fathom out why this may be the case. We haven't changed anything on the site from a technical point of view, just added content and usual blog etc pages. Search Console lists 147 pages as 404 errors but there are no urgent messages or alerts/warnings. I really don't know how to proceed and try and find out what is going on with the site. Can anyone offer suggestions?
-
We have finally found out what the issue was. We realised that on the days that Google Analytics said there was no traffic to our site, we'd had people visiting the site and submitting lead forms, also we sent out a newsletter in that period and lots of people clicked through according to the email marketing report. So then we looked at the plugin that handled the Google Analytics on the site and there was an error with the plug-in. We've fixed that now and it's all fine! Phew! Thanks very much for all your help, it certainly helped us get to the right conclusion.
-
Just had a quick look at some of these questions: the fall in traffic is across the board, all channels except social are down by around 50%. Also mobile/desktop are both down by a similar amount. We were ranking on page 1 for 43 keywords but now it is 28. I can't see a particular major fall in any specific keyword though and our number 1 rankings is steady at 8.
Looking at Analytics, over the past 6 days, only 1 pageview has been logged, this was yesterday. I can't see how the traffic could drop to virtually zero like that.
-
Thanks Meisha, I will look at all these factors.
-
Hi there. A few other questions might help narrow down the issue. When you mentioned the sessions, were those specific to organic or via all channels? If that number is a total, are you able to narrow the drop down to any single channel? Are there significant differences between mobile and desktop traffic, and discrepancies there? Were you getting referral traffic from any other site(s) and that link was removed or is now broken? If you are tracking keywords, has your rank dropped from any high-value keyword? Have you checked search console keyword analytics to check for trends related to brand or non-brand search volume or rank drops? Have the SERPs changed for any of the target keywords that you were previously performing well with - example, did a new knowledge graph appear? Are people running paid ads when previously there were no paid ads? These are all areas to check for changes that could result in a substantial drop. I hope this helps!
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
-
Hey DA of my website decreased last night what could be the reason?
Hey DA of my website decreased last night what could be the reason?
Reporting & Analytics | | mozmoz90 -
.com site referral traffic to ccTLDs
We have 7 international domains set up along with our main .com site. All of the ccTLds are showing their main referral traffic as coming from the .com site in GA, and most of those being from mobile. Each site is set up correctly with geo-targeting and hreflang tags. Has anyone experienced this before?
Reporting & Analytics | | ggpaul5620 -
Google Shopping tracking as organic traffic - help!
Hey guys, I have an eCommerce client who sometimes runs Google PLA and Google Shopping campaigns. However, we don't run his AdWords for him, just do his SEO. At the moment, the Shopping campaigns track as organic traffic within Analytics. And I can't see any way to change this! It's so infuriating. How do I change this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | jasarrow0 -
Universal Analytics: Why does Google Organic appear as Direct traffic?
Hi there, When I enter the site via Google Search and follow myself via Real-Time Analytics I appear an organic visitor (which is good). When I browse and visit the site I still am an organic visitor. However, as soon as I fill in the contact form (gravity forms) and land on the "thank you page" I appear as a direct visitor with Google as the source. Since I have the thank you page set-up as a goal, Analytics incorrectly attributes these conversions to the direct medium instead of the organic medium. The tracking code has been installed on all the pages and all conversions are being recorded. What is going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | Robbern0 -
Image ranking plummet help
Hi Moz Community, I need help understanding why my site is dropping rankings and traffic significantly. We were hit the hardest with doing a image query filter ~6/2-6/3 (image attached). We also had a site migration on this exact date, but didn't change URL structure or domain names, just switched hosting sites. I'm assuming this plummet is from the migration, but can't figure out why. I may also not be understanding this filter clearly so let me know. Shoot any questions my way that could help your understanding of the problem be more clear. Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | IceIcebaby
-Reed yVzQRTK0 -
What is click2.scour, and why is it showing up as Referral Traffic in Google Analytics?
I've noticed that a couple of my clients in the insurance industry have been receiving a pretty large boost in Referral Traffic from a source called click2.scour.com and click2.efacts.com. What surprises me most is that the traffic has a low Bounce Rate, a high Avg. Visit Duration, and is made up of 100% New Visits. What is this? Why would they be getting so much traffic from these two sources all of a sudden? Thanks in advance for your help!
Reporting & Analytics | | copyjack0 -
How to devide Google traffic into local google traffic (.com , .uk , .cn etc) in Analytics
Hi, friends In google analytics , we can see search traffic from google, but is it possible to deeply see from which local google? eg: .com , .uk, .hk etc? Thanks alots
Reporting & Analytics | | topchinaseo
Boson0 -
How much direct traffic is really direct?
Does anyone else think that a large chunk of traffic labelled as "Direct" in your analytics isn't direct at all. When you analyse traffic trends it seems that a large percentage could just be browsers with their referring URL hidden so it only appears direct. Here's the evidence: When we've been affected by major search algorithm changes, we've seen big changes in direct traffic as well as organic, but not in referral traffic. If direct traffic is just bookmarks, typed-in URLs, and people clicking through from emails why is direct traffic 85% new visitors? We don't do any offline advertising, so you'd expect genuine direct traffic to be returning visitors -- either our brand loyalists or subscribers to our email newsletters. If you segment direct traffic into new and returning visitors and look at a major algo update as discussed in 1), you find all the drop in direct traffic is from New Direct visitors, with no drop at all in Returning Direct visitors. Can anyone explain who these New, Direct visitors are if not simply mislabelled new, search visitors. Cookie deletion can't be the problem (ie: they can't be Returning, Direct really) because the traffic doesn't behave like returning, direct (that is, it varies too much). I'd be really interest to hear theories, and whether anyone has any figures on the extent of HTTP referrer blocking.
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610