Can anyone diagnose drop in organic traffic? (Screenshot attached)
-
I have an unexplained drop in google traffic on the 9th July. There are no messages in webmaster tools and no onsite or link building had taken place. In fact there were no changes at all. The only possible thing I can think of is that for some time I have had a problem where the bounce rate for my site was 95% plus in analytics. That data is wrong as the website is converting 1in 10 visitors and for them to convert the bounce rate would 90% (If EVERY other visitor bounced) as they have to visit several pages to do so.
Any help appreciated!
-
sales on the site have dropped so its not just an analytics reporting problem I don't think.
-
A drop this significant makes me think the Google Analytics tracking code has been removed/changed or otherwise broke somehow on the majority of the pages of your site and thus is not capturing the majority of the tracking data. It's happened to me multiple times when I uploaded a footer include file that didn't have the GA tracking code on it and overwrote the existing footer file which did. Have you confirmed that the GA tracking code is working properly on every page? Here's a great Chrome extension - Google Analytics Debugger - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna?hl=en
-
Yep there is some very weird stuff going on. Many first pages have in the top 5 that have come from nowhere and according to MOZ have 0 domain authority. These must be new sites that somehow pop up in the top 10! Maybe google now 'tests' new sites on page 1 to see their worth... who knows.
-
Adult dating sector.
-
Thanks I'd appreciate that.
-
Its not a site I can look at from our office but can take a look tonight for you.
Robert
-
What sector is your website in?
-
I've been working on escort website, and since panda rolled out, strange things started to happen on the adult section... And strange things still continue to happen.
My task was to do SEO for most popular keyword for escort in uk, and recently i started to see massive search result changes. Usually google showed about 40 000 000 results, this friday it showed less than 10 000 000, today it's 20 000 000, the same is happening on all modifications of that keyword.
I would guess that panda update had minor changes to adult content (not porn), but I have no clue what exactly. Tryed to analyze top ranking results, but they were changing very often, and sometimes even brand new domains, without high DA and PA authority were on top results. -
Hi,
All keywords have dropped. I have seen this before and site recovered a few weeks later for no reason whatsover. Google seems to be particularly volatile at the minute and search results seem to be poorer than ever.
It could be panda I guess. I read the article Trespass and perhaps google see's the content as poor quality? The site in question is an adult dating site so please feel free to take a look at the on site SEO if you're not easily offended! Any on site suggestions to combat panda are appreciated. http://www.local-sex-search.com.
Apart from that I don't know what else could be causing the drop.
-
-
Well bounce rates in Google Analytics are available to Google of course but aren't being used as a signal within Google Search. Did already check the nr of keywords which dropped in terms of traffic? This could indicate if your problem is through your whole site or if it just depends on a couple of keywords.
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
-
Free Media Site / High Traffic / Low Engagement / Strategies and Questions
Hi, Imagine a site "mediapalooza dot com" where the only thing you do there is view free media. Yet Google Analytics is showing the average view of a media page is about a minute; where the average length of media is 20 - 90 minutes. And imagine that most of this media is "classic" and that it is generally not available elsewhere. Note also that the site ranks terribly in Google, despite having decent Domain Authority (in the high 30's), Page Authority in the mid 40's and a great site and otherwise quite active international user base with page views in the tens of thousands per month. Is it possible that GA is not tracking engagement (time on site) correctly? Even accounting for the imperfect method of GA that measures "next key pressed" as a way to terminate the page as a way to measure time on page, our stats are truly abysmal, in the tenths of a percentage point of time measured when compared with actual time we think the pages are being used. If so, will getting engagement tracking to more accurately measure time on specif pages and site signal Google that this site is actually more important than current ranking indicates? There's lots of discussion about "dwell time" as this relates to ranking, and I'm postulating that if we can show Google that we have extremely good engagement instead of the super low stats that we are reporting now, then we might get a boost in ranking. Am I crazy? Has anyone got any data that proves or disproves this theory? as I write this out, I detect many issues - let's have a discussion on what else might be happening here. We already know that low engagement = low ranking. Will fixing GA to show true engagement have any noticeable impact on ranking? Can't wait to see what the MOZZERS think of this!
Reporting & Analytics | | seo_plus0 -
Bot Traffic Higher Than Unfiltered?
We filtered bot traffic from one of our Google Analytics accounts and traffic is higher than with the unfiltered view. Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Leithmarketing0 -
Spike in Direct visits with Drop in Google Organic Visits
Does anyone have an explanation for why Google organic visits plummeted while direct visits rose the same amount. Total visits have been very normal. jI1Bn2B,UuzONNK kepV0eu
Reporting & Analytics | | phogan0 -
How to see organic traffic only?
Im having trouble separating our organic traffic vs our PPC. When I go into Analytics>Traffic>Sources>Search>Organic, its giving me numbers that are not accurate. I believe whats happening is that its not able to distinguish our bing organic/ppc. Is using Webmaster tools Search Queries a more accurate way to determine organic search volume?
Reporting & Analytics | | DemiGR0 -
False inflation in traffic
Hi- We are seeing an inflation in our traffic via Webgain in Germany. Our team in Germany does not use Webgains Our team in the US does not participate in any affiliate networks/programs Any ideas on why we would be seeing this inflation in just one region?
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Search Traffic Drops Before It Improves?
I'm working on a site with tons of great, useful content....the owners of the site implemented a new site layout and design (complete overhaul) and they were lacking basics such as meta descriptions, 301 redirects, and, shockingly, they had the same Title tag for every single page on a site with thousands of unique how-to articles. Unsurprisingly their traffic dropped by about 300%. They generate most of their traffic from people learning how to build stairs, how to install crown molding, and other related matters. Beginning last Thursday I've been performing basic on-site SEO, things like having unique titles for each page and similar tasks. The week from Thursday when I began until yesterday (Wednesday), Google traffic dropped -29.73% - 17,715 vs 25,210 I believe this is a normal part of the "Google Shuffle" -- does anyone have a Matt Cutts link or similar proof that this is a normal part of the process?
Reporting & Analytics | | wattssw0 -
Drop in google referral traffic
Hi guys, As we know, GA shows google as traffic source in two ways: google / organic for organic searches and google.TLD / referral for everything else: google groups, base.google.com, static pages, google reader, google image search, google search appliance/mini. What we noticed is that around Oct 20th there's a huge drop of google.TLD / referral traffic to our site. Do you experience something similar? I couldn't find anything Google-related that happened around this specific date. We use GSA for our site search and I'm wondering if this could be the reason - maybe someone from our development team made changes to GSA settings that affected this traffic source. Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | lgrozeva0 -
Has Google changed its algorithm? My traffic has almost doubled and I don't know why.
My traffic has nearly doubled over the past few days, and my conversion rate has doubled as well. It looks like our rankings haven't changed... We haven't done anything to the site recently, although we did submit a couple of press releases through the wire not too long ago (within the last few weeks). I do not think that this is a cyclical/seasonal jump in traffic because last year this did not occur. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | deuce1s0