Sudden increase in returning visitors
-
Hi,
in the last couple of days I've seen the following changes in my analytics:
-
about 35% increase in overall traffic(both organic and ppc)
-
new visitors dropped about 20%(both organic and ppc)
-
bounce rate increased in about 10%(both organic and ppc)
I haven't done any changes to the analytics code nor any other big change to the website.
I'm obviously pleased with the increase in traffic but worried about the fact that it is mostly from returning visitors.
I just want to make sure that nothing went bad so I can catch this on time, any advice on what to look for would be great.Thanks,
Asaf
-
-
right now I am using "absolutely unique visitors" as my gauge. Not perfect, but it will have to do.
-
right now I am using "absolutely unique visitors" as my gauge. Not perfect, but it will have to do.
-
I think they have a huge issue with sessions now.
based on people's comments, the change seems to be rather big and renders the results almost useless. I guess if It's going to stay that way I should learn how to read the new results.
-
Yes.. this would have been nice. However I believe they think there is little to no change. I use Joomla on the site that has problems and I am curious if Joomla's sessions are conflicting... I went from 90% new visits to 70% visits. Now I use a calculator to see what my old traffic was.
From what I can see, with some users it is counting each page view as a visit. If someone comes to my site searching like "how to build a red widget" and I see 15 visits. I know there is not 15 people that search this term. Rather the sessions are screwy. Not sure if this is a Google fix, or something on my part yet.
-
well it is a change: http://analytics.blogspot.com/
apparently on 11/8 Google has changed they way they close sessions.
and I'm way out of they're 1% change - "this change may slightly increase the number of visits"
they could have sent a simple mail.........
-
I am experiencing it too... it looks like GA changed how they look at sessions. This is the problem I assume. It is really throwing off my numbers. I am curious if it is a CMS thing.
-
Usually I don't have a lot of traffic
Organic search was
a couple of days ago(very much average)
39 visits - 76.92% new visits - 20.51% bounce rate
today (till now):
72 visits - 50.00% new visits - 62.50% bounce rate
-
How much traffic do you have? Could it just be a large fluctuation?
-
It's an adult novelty store,
and there is currently a valentines day like event here but the keywords that bring in the traffic are also not directly related to this event and the fact that the bounce rate has increased on these terms alerted me.
but maybe I should wait a couple of days and see
-
What is the topic of your site? Are there any real-world events going on related to your site that could explain this change in traffic?
Are there any seasonal factors for your site? Any sales or discounts? Is your site in any way related to "back to school" activities?
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
-
Sudden drop in traffic since website redesign – can't spot double firing sessions pre-update
Hi all, We launched an updated website around mid-April and have seen a long-term drop in unique page views and sessions since then. Between 25-35%. Page views returned to normal within a month, however. In terms of acquisition, we've not lost referrals or direct traffic, just organic sessions. I haven't seen any significant Google updates except for 'Fred' but that was in March (pre-website update). We did have to do some 301s and fix up an HTML and XML sitemap, etc, post launch – but that's been in place for a while now so shouldn't still have such an effect? We are also struggling with load speed at the moment, working on this at the moment. Didn't think this had a such a significant impact on ranking however. We've lost mostly non-UK traffic, especially USA. We're actually climbing rankings for a lot of new keywords I'm targeting, so I can't see how our SEO has been hampered. Frustratingly, I wasn't using Search Console or Moz Pro before this update, so can't compare much in the way of keyword traffic (I know I feel very silly now). I don't know if it's a reporting issue (I wish it was). I mean we had both GTM and GA tags on the website (I didn't know this until I looked into it) but these were present post website-launch. And I haven't found enough double firing sessions or page views to suggest we used to be getting double figures anyway. Before this, we were ranking brilliantly and getting more organic traffic than ever. All the best,
Reporting & Analytics | | landport0 -
Can the end of a competition cause a drop in organic visitors?
Hi everyone, Over the last six months I've been running a few competitions on my largest site, but noticed a very large decrease in organic sessions just after the third one ended. For reference, the site is ~10 years old and gets a couple of million sessions per month.Organic sessions throughout last year and before the holiday periods were around 800k/month, which then increased by 50% during the holiday period alongside a competition I ran.These competitions double the pages per session and add another 1.5 minutes onto session duration. At the end of one of the competitions this year, daily organic sessions halved overnight and are now below the baseline of last year - and not improving. Some possible causes include; Google update - unlikely, because the date of the drop doesn't coincide with any increase in SERP volatility that I can find The extremely quick overnight drop in engagement (pages/session and session duration falling back to pre-comp baseline) caused Google to believe our site to be less popular and thus less deserving of rankings Visitors who've been bombarded with month-long competitions are sick of seeing them and are not searching for my site so often Email tagging - in the week before, UTM tracking parameters were added to all emails (of which there are a lot of subscribers) - as the number of Email visitors in Analytics increased, Organic did slightly decrease at the same time. I think this is unlikely, but I wonder if somehow some of our email visitors were previously being classed as Organic as well as some being Direct Incorrectly tagged as Direct - at the same time as the organic drop, Direct traffic doubled - it has since decreased back to just above the Direct baseline, however Organic has not improved I'd just be interested to know if anyone has any experience with something similar happening and, if so, what do you think the cause was and how did you rectify it? Thank you very much for your input in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | serges780 -
Changing UX for different types of visitors
If we want to change the UX for different types of visitors (ex: direct, google PPC, google organic, bing organic, etc.) what is the best way to do it? With Universal Analytics, where can we find the source and medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | AMHC0 -
May last year my sites orgainic listings, and therfore visitors, plumeted. Why?
Hello, May last year my site took a major fall. I am unsure why, and it's time I found out why. Recently I have rebuilt the site from scratch, except for the urls and content, and it's starting to turn back. What is the best method to go about understanding just what caused the decline? What are the options I have? See the image for a graph of the all-time traffic. http://i.imgur.com/uL93yPj.png My website in question is: www.ditalia.com.au Thanks. uL93yPj.png
Reporting & Analytics | | infinart0 -
Do i need a new dedicated server to increase my website speed
Hi, i have been talking to my hosting company about my site. I am having major problems with the speed of the site. My site is www.in2town.co.uk Ever since i had to redesign my site after a major mistake was made by the hosting company, my site has been running slow and i have tried everything to sort this out including moving to a dedicated server. The trouble is nothing is working and now my hosting companny have told me that i need a new dedicated server which will make it faster. My site is in joomla and the hosting company have told me that the dedicated server below will make the site run faster, but shall i trust them or find another hosting company. Intel i3 540 3.06 Ghz HT 4MB S-Cache $219/mo $289/month500GBStorage6GBRAM10TBBandwidthI am using the following to test the speed of my site http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/r0spOGObd/www.in2town.co.uk and http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.in2town.co.uk/kVV1mTDcThe trouble i have is, when you try loading the home page it is slow and when you try moving around the site it is slow.Can anyone please give me some advice.
Reporting & Analytics | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Dramatic Increase in referrals from own website
The past few weeks I've been wracking my brain to figure out why on earth my branded searches could be dropping off at 30-40%. Well today, I realize I've had a dramatic increase in referrals from my own site (the non www verison). I'm talking 150 in March of last year to 5k in March of this year drastic. My 301 redirects haven't changed as far as I know -- I've had them set to redirect from the non www. to the www. for at least a year or two. I'm assuming visitors from search engines are somehow getting the non www version and the redirect is attributing the traffic to referrals instead of search. The drop in search traffic and the increase in referral traffic fall on the same day. Does that sound right/possible? If so, how do I fix this? My traffic stats for two clients are all screwy because of this. I want to make sure whatever solution I implement won't hurt my search traffic numbers any more 🙂 Has anyone else seen this happen recently? I could imagine an anomaly with one site but I find it odd that it could be two client sites. I still have some others to check. Thanks in advance! Leslie
Reporting & Analytics | | LeslieVS0 -
Number of Visitor Entries to page via search engine
Hi, I wanted to figure out the most optimal way to track the number of visitors that comes to a specific page on my blog via search engine only. I know Google Analytics has a "top landing page" filter, but that includes all visitors that comes in directly or other channels. Is there a way to figure out how many visitors a certain page received that was generated through only search engine? Does SEOmoz have this capability?
Reporting & Analytics | | kevinyu10290 -
GA - how returning visitors are counted ?
If a visitor comes to my site from 3 different traffic sources within a session, does GA report shows 1 visit and 2 returning visitors ? Previously ( before Google made changes in session ) it used to show 1 visit and zero returning visitors. right ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050