Why is my direct traffic down DRASTICALLY?
-
I have been seeing a trend for a while that is intesifying.
My direct traffic numbers are down A LOT. We are not down 50% to LY (in actual number not just percentage of traffic)
I am trying to understand what could be the causes of this issue.
I was considering simply bigger meaner competition, but I actually perform decently on my returning customers. Also my performance on my brand keyword is more inline with my current trend so I would except these KW to do equally as bad if the actual brand/store was the issue.
The more surprising even, is the fact that I can trace back the start of the trend exactly to the day. Overnight on Sept 22 LY direct traffic went down 30% (to LY) when it was trending UP 20-25%(to LY) before.
Now, we did do a redesign of the website on May 2011 (4 months before the drop), and did change host Oct 2011 (a couple weeks after the start of the trend).
Do you have any clue as to why this could be happening?
Did GA start tracking direct traffic differently?
Any thoughts? -
Hi, I read you story with the direct traffic and I am experiencing the same problem. Have you found a solution?
Thanks a lot !
-
Thanks! I am not sure how to look at ISPs of the visit. As far as email newslrtter, it was always done with mailchimp and tracked as such I believe (in campaigns).
-
Well yes and no. It depens on the time frame. We have seen a drop of traffic all over recently (after the new panda/penguin updates) but at the time the switch occured (Sept 21 2011) and for several months after that, other traffic types were up which was consistent with what we were experiencing before the direct traffic drop. No switch in sources.
Direct traffic starts dropping overnight sept 21st
Referrals start dropping about Oct 18th
Organic search is up and doing fine the entire time, but not showing a spikeNow numbers are different, but the environment is different, which is why I choose to look back at last Fall to try to identify what happened.
Hubby is looking into services we might have stopped using that might have been the cause.. -
While you have seen a drop in direct traffic, have you seen an increase in any other type of traffic?
-
In GA, look at the ISPs of the visits to see if one dropped off. We had a monitoring service that was actually triggering javascript that tweaked our direct numbers at a company once. Another thing that would affect it is doing email marketing and doing a tracking code so that suddenly the people who were direct (clicking on the link from the email) are now showing up as email referrals.
-
What are these "direct" visitors doing on your site?
Hitting a specific page? Loading an image? Robots crawling? Robots checking pages for change?
I am suspicious that these are not genuine human visits.
-
Hi, yes I mean actual direct traffic , not search related. No outside mktg was done so it cannot be that. Newsletter increased since then, so not that either.
Search on brand term is doing ok, but direct traffic is WAY down.
I thought it could be the way google assigns direct now vs then.. But cant find any info to substantiate that. I would accept a double digit drop but the fact it happens overnight, just seems weird..I am attaching the graph to show what I mean...
-
Hmm.. Well It is not that It is just surfacing, it is just that I am asking around only now
I have a sitemap and no problem for page indexation. The pages that are losing the most traffic are still indexed. no issue with that.
We also have no errors 400 or 500 recorded on GWT..Given we apparently had a previous SEO dude use link exchange network on us (yeah I know nothing better than getting f**ked and paying for it) we do fall in the penguin a bit and did fall a bit in the panda updates, but more in a slow manner, losing positions one at a time, rather than being dumped to page 5 or 40 overnight. Though I dont see what that would have to do with direct traffic loss??
-
Your direct traffic meaning people typing your domain in to their address bar, correct? Nothing to do with search, right? Or do you mean traffic from Brand terms? If it is direct traffic, did you stop any sort of non-search marketing around the same time that you didn't believe was producing any results e.g. email marketing, yellow page (or any other print) etc... if so, perhaps it was actually working and had people going directly to your website. If you mean traffic from brand terms could you share your URL with us?
-
)
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
-
Same spam traffic coming from two different sources
This week we did two big email sends from completely separate sources and separate lists. However, in GA I see spam traffic coming from the same city and the same service provider when I look at the report for each source. Screenshots attached. I'm hoping someone can help me understand what I'm looking at and what I should do in the future to prevent. Thanks! g9NTZ5z X5WhYnf
Reporting & Analytics | | eGInnovations0 -
Whats (Other) traffic in Google Analytics?
When I look through all our clients, a few are receiving the majority of their traffic from (other). [ Acquisition > Channels > (Other) ]. The only option in (other) is "website" or "offline", whatever that may be. And even weirder, the avg session duration is 0:00. Any idea what this may be?
Reporting & Analytics | | W2GITeam0 -
Tracking Organic Traffic and Conversions from multiple TLDs with Google Tag Manager
Hello Guys, I want to track traffic / conversions from different domains (basically same brand - but a lot of different TLD's). The "problem" is that the main conversion which I want to track always happens on the .com TLD and all other TLD's link to there. The problem is, that now the traffic always counts as Referral Traffic, even after setting up cross domain tracking over the google tag manager... So example: Sessions begins on example.co.uk/landing-page11 after User searched on it on google. He decides to buy the product and therefore moves to example.com for the checkout process. No I will have the conversion in my google analytics under referral with example.co.uk. --> but I want to have it under organic, and not under referral. How I can manage this? Thanks for you Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | _Heiko_0 -
How to Configure Custom Alerts for Real Time Traffic etc from Google Analytic API?
Hi All, I know how to set alert from google analytic but i want alerts for real time visitors so i think it is possible via Google Analytic API, so can anyone share with me the process or relevant blog post? Regards, Mit
Reporting & Analytics | | mit0 -
Organic and direct traffic swap
We moved to a CMS (Webhook) and when we did that organic traffic and direct traffic swapped places. Since we moved it organic traffic is down by about 400 visits and direct traffic is up by 400 visits. I went through the list below and confirmed everything is working. The http refer wasn't being passed for a couple of weeks but the issue was resolved and the organic traffic issue is still ongoing. Is there anything else that may cause this issue? I confirmed the issue isn't one of the below problems. during http to https redirect (or vice versa) the referrer may not be passed incorrect subdomain or cross-domain tracking can strip the referrer. 302 redirects sometimes caused the referrer to be dropped problems with cookies being lost/corrupted. javascript missing from certain entry pages (means any further page view looks like a direct)
Reporting & Analytics | | BT20090 -
Huge Spike in Direct Traffic from IE7
Our site is seeing a huge spike in direct (none) traffic from IE 7 from July 8, 2014 - on. June 25 - July 7 showed 21 direct visits from IE 7; July 8 - July 20 is showing 5,889 (an increase of 27,943%). All traffic from the spike is going to our homepage. Other Google Analytics' stats for this direct (none) IE 7 traffic: Bounce Rate: 99.52%
Reporting & Analytics | | SJVC_Susie
Avg. Session Duration: 0:02
Pages/session: 1.01
Mostly all new users What's strange is that the traffic is from a variety of cities and networks. What could be causing this? Has anyone experienced this before?0 -
Traffic Discrepancy between google and moz
I checked my traffic data this morning for this past week and there seems to be what I hope is a huge mistake. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/mckp My traffic seems to have dropped from 176 organic visits to 0 visits. There is no indication of this at all in Google analytics. What's going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcomLkwd0 -
Google Webmaster Dropped Traffic
Hi Guys, I've recently implemented a new site design with a new url architecture etc.. I set up Google Webmaster tools in early March and went live with the new site on 2nd April. Since the 6th April (4 days after going live) I've notice a drop in impressions from 15,000 - 28,000 per day to 3,500 - 5,500 per day. Now I'm kind of new to this, so after I cleaned up after my initial panic, I checked impressions vs. clicks. Impression are down 44% and clicks 31%. Not bad I thought but then again what if I dropped so far off the radar I never made an impression. 1. So first question: Are the number of impressions of a keyword independant of ranking. So if I rank #3,445,234th will I still see impressions listed but avg. position reflect #3,445,234? So while I was thinking of asking these questions I checked Google Analytics for which I have just over 3 years of metrics. Compared to the past; overall traffic and organic traffic are the same if not 10-20% better. 2. So second: Am I missing something? Its a resort website so easter just ended and you would expect the traffic to match and drop, but such a sudden and dramitic drop in Webmaster Tools impressions does not match Google Analytics. Infact Organic traffic climbed slightly. Can anyone offer any insight? Thanks, Adam
Reporting & Analytics | | NaescentAdam0