Google traffic plummeted on Sunday - what can I do?
-
On Sunday, my google traffic plummeted. I was getting 320 hits a day from Google on my best days - my site is just about to turn 3 months old so I was thrilled with that. On Sunday it was 110 and I think it is getting worse. Edit: Yep, yesterday was 65.
Google Webmasters shows the drop today. One day, my impressions were 5,500 and the next just 1,000. Yikes. My traffic is so depressing now after so much hard work.
Is this Google Panda? What can I do? I have no idea why this happened. I am getting several quality backlinks a week, sometimes a day.
-
Yes I am doing my best to add value. Tips, reviews, info - and only the best deals on the best products that moms love. I know moms like my site based on the response. Plus - the big deal sites (DA: 68-73) are using my deals and giving me backlinks. I write from a first person point of view and I don't do paid posts or anything like that. My site is better than some ranking on the first page right now - sites that don't update frequently on some category pages, that have very little content, go off-topic just to make money, but high DA because they are older sites.
How can I nofollow my affiliate links? I have about 600 posts. I can't go back and do it one by one.
-
Affiliate sites are often prime targets for Panda. IMO the only way to succeed with an affiliate site is if you are adding plenty of value along with the affiliate products. Sites that use the stock product descriptions and add little else will not do well. For your products make sure that people are able to get much more value out of reading the information on your site than they can on other sites who sell the same products.
Also, make sure that your affiliate links are nofollowed. But, this is not likely the cause for your traffic drop.
-
A honeymoon boost does make sense. I am getting some awesome backlinks but my Domain Authority is 17 and I have been on the first page with sites that are 40+. However, I attributed that to the backlinks.
I am still on the first page for my main keyword. Not getting much traffic but at least I have that.
I have no copied content whatsoever. But I do have a lot of affiliate links that are not cloaked as my blog is deal/coupon related with an audience of moms.
-
This can be really common for a new domain. Often Google will give a new site a boost in the SERPS to see how it does and how users interact with it. Then, after a few weeks or months it can decrease to its rightful place. My guess is that this is what has happened. However, it can only be a guess without having a deeper look.
Panda is a potential issue as well although we don't really know how this "10 day rollout" works. It seems to me that most sites that were affected by Panda this time were affected on July 18 but I suppose the 20th is possible as well. If you have a lot of content that is copied from other sites then I would think Panda is a high possibility. Otherwise I'm guessing it is just that you had a honeymoon boost.
-
Well what's the domain? I'd be happy to take a look
-
Thanks. I have been trying to build proper, awesome content and links and google was loving me. I just don't get why all of a sudden everything plummeted.
-
Build proper, awesome content and links. That's what you can do and the best thing we can suggest without any further info.
Also don't rely on GWT for any sort of actual data. (Or GA for that matter COUGH 'not provided' COUGH)
-
Hi,
Could you share the URL? It does seem like your site might have been affected by Panda. Panda was rolled out on Thursday, but might not have affected you until Sunday since this Panda update is being rolled out over a 10 day period. What kind of content have you focused on?
-
You said your site was only 3 months old--it could be a reverse sandbox effect. Also, the last algo update was on July 12 (possibly) and it could of moved it around.
-
Can you share your site url so we can take a look.
Tracy
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
-
Google Analytics - Referral traffic being reported as Direct traffic
Hi, I have a link on my www homepage to another subdomain website. Both websites are served on https, and have independent Google Analytics properties. However, the traffic from the www site to the subdomain site is being reported as Direct, and not Referral traffic. Any ideas why? See image provided for context... RCn6HER
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley1 -
Pandora in Google Analytics
Hi Mozers, in Google Analytics our ads are registering a 10 second page duration and a 90% bounce rate, which is pretty atrocious. My questions are: Organic page duration is 3:15 minutes, and Social + Referral are similar. Yet Pandora is bringing the average time on site way down, to less than a minute. Will those paid ad metrics be factored to the User Behavior and therefore negative affect our overall rankings? In other words does Google now see our page duration as less than a minute? The Pandora rep says that Google Analytics and Pandora have "systemic issues" such that GA is very inaccurate with Pandora metrics. I find that difficult to believe. Any insights here? Thanks all! Jane
Reporting & Analytics | | CalamityJane770 -
Google Analytics goals by source report?
Hello everybody. Is there way in Google analytics to create report on what goals have been completed per each source? Example: Lets say I have 3 goals: Subscription, Purchase, Quote. How can I get report, saying something like this: google / organic - Subscription - 5 conversions
Reporting & Analytics | | DmitriiK
Purchase - 3 conversions
Quote - 10 conversions and so on. P.S. Basically, I want the reverse of standard Google Analytics goal completions report, where you can click on goal and see which sources/mediums completions came from. I'd like to do the opposite - "click" on source/medium and see which goals have been completed. Thanks0 -
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 -
Google Analytics Queries
Hi we used a web company who put our analytics under their company name we have left them and set up a new tracking code not associated with them, but we still have access to the data and it is all contained under the same login, is it possible to merge the two tracking codes? so that we have seemless history. Also does anyone know if you can change the primary e-mail address (gmail account) to a corporate email account? Any help would be appreciated as we have researched both and from what we have found we can't merge the data and also we are stuck with the primary email address.
Reporting & Analytics | | loopylu030 -
Google Analytics
Hi I added one google analytics account with a third party business as an admin, and I accidentally shared all the accounts of my clients. So this business have access to all my google analytics account. How do I remove them as an admin of all the GA accounts except the one they need? A step by step process is welcomed 🙂 Thank you,
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Google Keyword Tool versus Google Analytics
Hi I'm trying to establish a methodology to best show the gap between potential and realised organic keyword traffic. To obtain potential keyword traffic I'm using the Google Adwords keyword tool to derive local monthly search volumes for exact keyword matches. To get the realised data I'm using Google Analytics. However, to get the I'm confused as to which is the best way of getting a comparable metric from Google Analytics (GA). I was using custom reports and the 'organic searches' metric. However, this provides different values to a standard report selecting non-paid search in the default advanced segments. What is the best report/metric in GA to use for both organic and paid search volumes that would be comparable to the Google Adwords keyword tool. Thanks Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0 -
Google +1 and ranking effect .
Anyone have any experience as to what effect google +1 has on ranking? Trying to figure out what impact it might have. Ecommerce site in norway selling childrens clothing. Atm we are ranking 25th for main targetted word childrens clothing (barneklær in norwegian). on google.no this has a difficulty of 34. None of main competitors have any amount of google +1's on their site. Lets say if I in some way could manage to get 100 ppl to push +1 button. Would this affect our ranking at all ? Might be impossible to answer but if anyone has thoughts about it I am interested. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | danlae0