Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Finding an Explanation for a Massive Spike in Organic Search Traffic
-
Hi,
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason. The organic search engine traffic had always been steady, but about two months ago, organic search traffic started rising slowly.
I checked OSE & a few other tools, but couldn't find any massive source of gained links or other explanations - just the usual occasional blog post about the company. I got in touch with my friend to see if maybe they'd gone with a competitor or something else, but he also had no idea (and even if he wasn't being honest with me, we still should've been able to spot links or social metrics or something!)
Then, yesterday, their organic search traffic just tripled. The crazy thing is, it's not from one keyword: Every search term, and (not provided) essentially went up 200-400%. And I have no freaking idea why. No large gain of links. No website editing. The only possible explanation I thought up is maybe one of their competitors got knocked out, but I doubt that would cause such a stratospheric rise.
So figured I'd turn to y'all. Any ideas on what might be causing such wonderful results? Anyone have any good tips on figuring out why a website could all of a sudden be doing incredibly? Analytics chart is below for the curious, and thanks in advance for any ideas / tips!
-
Your traffic seems to have increased around the time of the big Panda update around the 21st August. Looks like (in contrast with your competitors) you were doing something right.
You might like to keep an eye on this chart: http://www.rankranger.com/rank-risk-index which I find gives a nice overview of the serp fluctuations.
-
Maybe in GA, just under where you got that chart from, click "Source" and then plot out the different search engines to validate where that extra traffic is coming from. My assumption if you are seeing all the keywords rise and not sudden traffic from one or a few new keywords is that maybe you just started ranking in one engine across the board? Like maybe all the steady traffic you were seeing before was all from Bing but suddenly Google started blessing the site? I know that doesn't answer your question but at least will eliminate some of the possibilities.
Also, the sources you mention for looking for new backlinks take a while to update (like OSE). So new links wouldn't be showing up in there yet. You might want to look in your traffic sources > referrers report in GA to see if there are some new links in there that you didn't know about before. Or if the total number of unique referrers has increase comparing two time frames? Might be a needle in a haystack but just one more place to look.
Good luck!
-
It's hard to say exactly what the cause is without knowing what the site/keywords are, but I'd recommend checking if these are all New Visits and/or Unique Visitors and where they are geographically located. I've seen huge spikes in traffic by the same group of people/computers in foreign countries before who were hitting my site over and over for some unknown reason. Also, check which search engine is sending the traffic, which landing pages they visited first, etc.
And of course, this spike could be legit, especially if your site ranks for keywords related to a particular topic that happened to get a lot of searches yesterday (breaking news, a controversial report debunking commonly held belief, viral video, etc).
-
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason.
Try digging a little deeper into the analytics.
If you are looking at his analytics you should be able to see where those visitors were coming from on that day... also pages that they entered and lots more. The answers are just a few clicks away.
-
From those analytics, it almost looks like he started his website in Jan 2013... if that is the case, it can take some time to establish authority and ranking. If your rankings increased, then it makes sense that your traffic would also increase.
For a site that I optimized, we saw some immediate results; however, after 3 months of building up authority, rankings shot up and so did traffic.
It is tough to say exactly what is causing that... looks like you must have done something good : )
Mike
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
-
If website users don't accept GDPR cookie consent, does that prevent GA-GTM from tracking pageviews and any traffic from that user that would cause significant traffic decreases?
I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted). Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance? It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc). Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Kickboard2 -
What is Local SEO in Google Analytics (Organic Source)
Recently, I saw "Local SEO" is mentioned as the organic source. Can someone please tell what is this and from where Google is fetching data for this source?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin.Monks0 -
In Google Search Console: Total Clicks differ from the sum clicks on search queries
Hi.This may be a google technical question, but I've searched a lot and I couldn't find any certain information about that.The problem appears when you look at two stats in Search Console ( WebMasters Tools, some months ago), particulary in the Search Analysis.1- Total clicks2- Sum of clicks at every search query.I attached an image to make me clear.8IZsxs6.png
Reporting & Analytics | | NachoRetta2 -
Can you arrange Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percentage change?
I'm doing a year to year traffic audit for a client. I would like to analyze Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percent change. Is there a way to do this? Do I have to create a custom variable? 9BH70RO
Reporting & Analytics | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Adwords start Organic traffic SIGNIFICANTLY drops
I hope someone can give me some insight here, or at least point me in the right direction. As of September 1 we are running Adwords. We are seeing an alarming drop in our organic traffic since then. It's almost like Adwords is cannibalizing organic. August/September Paid 116/847 Organic 648/178 We've looked at why the Organic could have dropped (penalties, site function issues, etc.) and have found nothing unusual. Can someone give me a reason why this might be happening, Why such a dramatic decrease just as adwords is started. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Britewave0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Senuke and traffic generator program is a good idea?? I think i got some problems now.
First of all thanks for reading, especially if you are the one whose bright ideas will help me out:) I started using senuke xcr about 3 months ago, obviously at the beginning i didnt make much success(not like I do now). Later i bought that inferno thingy and it actually works. First 2 weeks didnt make much difference(although i could see some little but stable uprising) but after 4th week ended, the average impression and queries doubled up, 6th went up again, its like every week or two it jumps up and keeps it there. Also the actual traffic from keywords went up! When about the second week finished, i started using a traffic generator program, first it leveled out the impressions and seemed to help a bit. Lately i think it messed it all up, plus about 2 weeks ago there was 2-3 dayswhen i sent a bit more traffic than usual and around that time the average rising of impressions didnt happened, it might even went down. Now i stopped using traffic g. and everything stayed the same no improvement!! Anyone could help me? I need to get it moving up again! Also im still nowhere near the top as the keywords are competitive well at least for me. What do i do wrong and what should i do? Also what about traffic generator? ps is it safe or/and or allowed to write that? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Sugafree0 -
Google Analytic - Is it possible to see which organic keyword triggered goals?
Hi, I am trying to see which of my Google organic keywords triggered my goals? In GA I click > Conversion > Goals > Overview > Source Medium (This then says where my goals came from but when I click Google / Organic it just brings me to the overview page of my organic traffic). Is it possible to see which organic keywords trigger goals?
Reporting & Analytics | | AdvanceSystems0