Huge and sudden fall in SEO traffic
-
Hi,
I’m writing you because we have noticed in Google Analytics account, a huge fall in the SEO traffic of mywebsite, starting suddenly in one precise day.
The difference between this day and the previous one is: -46,36% . Traffic has fallen in all parts of the site in the same way. Some details:
- we did not make any relevant change to the website
- we haven’t been banned by Google (or we don’t have any message about it in GWT)
- the number of the landing pages remains approximately the same
- the number of indexed keywords falls from 9.000 to 4.000.
- around 2 weeks ago we found out around 120 pages with 404 error, but the error now is solved and the pages are currently working
- we open the content to Google about 4 months but still we have not published our Site Map.
I know that the 404 error could could affect the indexation, but do you have any other idea, apart of this, of what could have happened? Thanks!
-
Agree.
Didn't saw any changes in our german website...
-
The 404 errors aside, which are certainly prime suspects for the drop - did the drop occur at the same time as a drop in your competitors rankings too? I recently noticed a 10 position drop for a major keyword and checked the Ranking History for that particular keyword and noticed that at all three of the competitors I initially submitted when I setup my campaign had all dropped an equal (or greater) number of positions for that particular keyword in the same week. Which would suggest to me that a change to Google algorithm has taken place and affected us all equally, rather than as a direct result of changes made to my website content or any temporary issues with the site which would prevent Search engines from crawing the site.
Whilst I am still suffering as a result of this drop it is good to see that it wasn't isolated to my site and therefore likely to be as a result of content changes or technical problems.
-
Candida,
We will need more details from Google analytics in order to determine a more likely cause for the problem. As Daniel suggested, it could be the Farmer Update if these changes occurred over the past month, but it could be something else.
What I suggest you do is view the entrance sources for the actual pages that received the drop in traffic. What keywords specifically received this hit? What keywords didn't? What sort of optimization did you do for the keywords that received the hit?
-
It would be helpful to see the domain so we could analyze the existing link profile. Depending on link types, anchor text percentages, and linking sites there could be a plenty of reasons the recent algo updates earmarked your domain.
Are you using an exact match domain?
Are the majority of your links one type? (Article dirs, blog comments, blog networks, etc.)
What have your search query reports showing recently? (Impressions, Click-thru rates, rankings)
-
Hi Candida, I'm wondering how your rankings are doing now that it's been a few weeks since the (possibly coincidental) update. Have you recovered any traffic? Did you figure out any reasons for the drop?
-
Search results can differ when logged into search engines, so make sure you compare results when you're logged out. After Google indexes your site again and finds the 404s gone, I'm sure you'll work your way back up.
-
Check your recent back link structure. A change in Google's algorithims could have render certain key words as not ranking because they are now considered to have an artificial linking structure.
-
Though it appears her website is targeted at Spain, and the Farmer/Panda update was aimed at US sites at that time, so that may not be the issue.
Can't reply to myself so will edit and correct. I should have said that the update was targeted to users in the US, not sites in the US, so she would need to see if it was just visitors from the US that dropped off to see if it was this update.
-
Yes, the fall has been the same in all sections of the web
-
Thanks I had no clue about this. Better check my feed more eh? That guy definitely thumbed down you lol
-
Do you track any of your rankings? Have they fallen by a uniform amount?
-
There was this pretty major algorithm update over the weekend called the Farmer Update. You can read more about it from Search Engine Land here:
http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071
If this applies to you, then it would definitely explain the drop in traffic.
-
My first thought is to check two things:
-
make sure the Google Analytics code is still present (and correct) on all your pages.
-
Check to make sure there aren't any new filters being applied to your Analytics account.
-
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
-
SEO Title Length
Hi Everyone. I have a few pages being flagged with "Title Too Long". However, these are page 2, page 3, page 4, etc of category pages. They obviously have "| Page x of x" at the end of the title. Can these be ignored or is there a more SEO friendly way of handling this issue? Thanks. Michael
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Magento SEO question
Hello Moz Community, I am wondering if these magento settings are correct for seo. www.domain.com 301 > www.domain.com/main-language www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword (index & follow) www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword/shopby/size-m (index & follow & canonicalized to www.domain.com/main-language/main-keyword) All layered navigation links are no-follow
Technical SEO | | mhenze0 -
Investigating a huge spike in indexed pages
I've noticed an enormous spike in pages indexed through WMT in the last week. Now I know WMT can be a bit (OK, a lot) off base in its reporting but this was pretty hard to explain. See, we're in the middle of a huge campaign against dupe content and we've put a number of measures in place to fight it. For example: Implemented a strong canonicalization effort NOINDEX'd content we know to be duplicate programatically Are currently fixing true duplicate content issues through rewriting titles, desc etc. So I was pretty surprised to see the blow-up. Any ideas as to what else might cause such a counter intuitive trend? Has anyone else see Google do something that suddenly gloms onto a bunch of phantom pages?
Technical SEO | | farbeseo0 -
Mobile and hidden content - Any issue for SEO?
In reference to mobile - am I walking a fine SEO line when it comes to hidden content on mobile? On the responsive variations of sites we are working on some content is hidden (that displays on the desktop version of the site) so that pages on mobile can display correctly. Is this negative for SEO? Appreciate any feedback Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
SEO for a franchise business
Were about to embark on an SEO project for a franchise business with about 150 franchises. Would it be best to give all of the franchises individual domain names or house them under the one domain? If they were on the same domain would it be worth setting them up with sub domains or with a URL so city.mydomain.com vs mydomain.com/city Thanks
Technical SEO | | acs1110 -
SEO impact of overseas data center
Hi there, I currently host a number of sites from data centers in the UK and Hong Kong but now have the need to develop a site specifically for an Australian audience. While our server in Hong Kong can probably provide an acceptably fast service to Australia i'm concerned that its location outside of Australia will negatively affect our local SEO efforts. Am i right to be concerned about this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dave
Technical SEO | | evidentlydavidm0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports1 -
What are SEO factors in re-doing a website?
Most of my work now involves converting older websites to CMS-based sites (in Wordpress) and I'm wondering about best practices here. If I create a "dev" or "sandbox" directory for my development work how do I keep the pages from being indexed while I am working on the new site? Can I "noindex" a directory? What do I do with the old html files when the new site goes live? I'm assuming I will do a 301 redirect from domain.com/index.html to the new domain.com/, and also on all of the inner pages that have equivalent pages in the new site. But there will be a lot of old files left that have no equal in the new site. Do I just delete these, or noindex nofollw them?
Technical SEO | | bvalentine0