Loss of 85-90% of organic traffic within the last 2 weeks.
-
Hey Everybody,
Have a client that recently came to us asking for SEO help. Did some initial analysis on their current SEO status and most everything looked pretty good. On-page work was pretty good, nothing really lacking there other then missing alt tags for all images. Their linking profile looked good too. Lots of good links from quality sources, all relevant. Client has done some good press releases. They could probably use a bit more focus in their content as it is somewhat general and not keyword focused. Initially it didn't look like they needed any help with their SEO, so was a bit curious as to why they contacted us.
Today we get their google analytics information and immediately noticed that they have had a 85-90 percent drop in organic traffic from all major search engines that started about two weeks ago. If all their SEO looks to be done properly, any ideas what would account for the massive drop in traffic? The only thing that looks like may have happened is that they may have dropped a couple spots from position #1 to position 2-3 for some of their highest traffic terms. Even if that is the case, I would not expect such a high drop off in terms of organic traffic.
Just curious as to what anyone else can attribute the huge drop in traffic to or what else may help identify the issue. It's almost as if analytics was turned off or removed from the site, but that is not the case.
-
Yes, I got the exact same issue on September 17th, but the drop in traffic was around 10% from Google only. It is really bad for us because usually from mid September traffic is picking up toward the Holiday season.
I am trying to understand what caused that drop in traffic. I have opened a thread about my own issue starting on September 17th:
http://moz.com/community/q/what-happened-on-september-17-on-google
Jonathan1979: what kind of metrics would you like to see? I'll be glad to share as much as I can. Thanks!
-
Hey Remus,
While it doesn't coincide with the exact time that the last algorithm hit, it could be that it just took time to go through the web. I found another post mentioning something on September 17th (http://moz.com/community/q/what-happened-on-september-17-on-google) and this is the exact day we saw the dramatic loss in organic traffic, so it seems that it's possible something has happened on that day if this client is not the only one to run into issues. Also I would kind of seem to go along with what was mentioned as being changed in the new update, in that google is interpreting the results now.
-
If you post a link we might be able to see if anything obvious shows up in the metrics.
-
Hi,
- Maybe you should check the exact timing of the drop in organic search with the latest algorithm updates visible on:
http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
- Also, you could check to see if other SEO's here had similar problems in August:
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-17268.html
- If they dropped a few positions in SERP's check your competitors backlinks, especially the "Just Discovered" section of open site explorer, maybe they do some shady stuff.
-
copyright infringement
- No they are the copyright/trademark holder.
downloads / malware
- Checked webmaster tools, noting is listed there under the malware section. Is there another way to check this?
hidden text
- No, there is none of this.
duplicate content
- Did some searches for this and did not find anything.
noindex applied by dumb designer
- Ha, I wish, but no.
bad robots.txt
- No, nothing is being blocked that should not be.
Thanks for the suggestions, anything else worth checking?
-
copyright infringement
downloads / malware
hidden text
duplicate content
noindex applied by dumb designer
bad robots.txt
Lots of things could cause this problem.
-
So, just from doing a bit more investigation, I read Google rolled out a new algorithm update a couple weeks ago, (around the same time the traffic dropped) Google Hummingbird, and my initial impressions of this are that, Google is now trying to interpret your search phrases as opposed to just reading them and returning matching results. This clients site is built around some wording that could be interrupted as slang. So it looks like instead of returning the clients site when these keywords are typed in, google is now returning slang term results, since my guess is that more often then not people were looking for the slang term not the clients site, resulting in the massive traffic drop. Has anyone seen anything similar?
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
-
How to Increase US traffic for other GEO based website
Can you help me to understand why my traffic from the US is not increasing for landing pages/product pages whereas for our blog it has grown 2X to 3X past 2 quarters? I am afraid that I don't get any right answer for this. Could you or someone help me to discover the answer? Also, what should I do to rank in the US for a particular KW, we rank on 2 positions for KW "Hackathon" in India but for the US the no is 56. I don't understand what to do and the best possible way to rank in the US.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rajnish_HE0 -
What is the best way to eliminate ghost traffic from Google Analytics?
Hey Mozzers, I just wanted to see how you all deal with eliminating Google ghost traffic sources from Google. I tried setting up a RegEx 'include' list before, but it seemed as though I was blocking potential traffic sources when I did as much (I'm probably missing something here). Anyway, I'm interested to read how you all have dealt with this issue in the past, thanks for reading!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
70% organic traffic drop in October?! Algorithm change?
I oversee content for a client and this past month there was a 70% decrease in traffic. We noticed the hit start on September 29th, and has never rebounded. Any suggestions what this could be (i..e latest Google algorithm update) and or tools I should use to look into it? Nothing is showing up as an alert on Moz analytics and need to address with my client asap.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
Overall traffic increasing but specific short tailed keywords decreasing any ideas?
Something very strange has happened regarding my website traffic when making a comparison to the first six months of 2012 and then 2014. Anybody got any ideas? From my Google analytics from 1 January 2014 to 1 July in other words six months my total traffic on my website was 30,209. Not provided source ( what does this mean ? ) was very high at 23,141 but two of the my main short tail keywords I've targeted in the past "Whitby holiday cottages “only equal 254 and "Whitby cottages" was only 176. When I made a comparison with the same time period below in 2012 the website traffic this year as gone up greatly by almost 20000, but the two of my money short tail keywords as gone down greatly! If I compare the same time frame for 2012 the overall traffic was only 13,380. Not provided source was nowhere near as high at only 1836 which is also much less than above in 2014 but the short tail keywords I targeted "Whitby holiday cottages was almost 10 times higher at 2005 and "Whitby cottages “much higher at 613. I ran the questionnaire on http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/quiz/ regarding Panda and particularly Penguin and its association with back links. The article says that Penguin didn't hit the overall keywords, but only specific ones if they been targeted on the following dates the time points of April 24, 2012 and May 25, 2012 which are known Penguin rollout dates. So when I checked the two short tail keywords above for those two dates the figures did seem to drop from 10 hits a day to 5 but then went back up immediately to approximately 10 hits a day during the two-month period which suggested to me that I'd not been hit by Penguin on those dates. So when you look at the comparison the first six months of 2012 and then 2014 there is no doubt that money short tail keywords of dropped off dramatically for me but the overall website traffic has gone up dramatically. Some of the increase in traffic will be down to time and more articles/pages etc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WhitbyHolidayCottages
The two short tail keywords I mention above I know I've dropped in Google rankings I used to be position three page one and the site is now position 10 so I would assume that's why I've dropped in traffic for those phrases.
Has anybody got any idea what's happened? I can honestly say that I've not noticed it in bookings on the website business seems about the same overall.0 -
Why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Press Release SEO. More than 90 press released in prweb. How good for seo
One of a competition sites known to us has published 90 press releases of all upcoming car models with PRWEB, PR7, DA 97 in last 4 months. All with different anchor based keywords and links. The page authority too is very high in some of them around 70 Though they might have had spent a sum, does this really influence from SEO perspective. If yes, can 10 press releases with PR Newswire which has PR8 and DA as 95 can be good if we consider doing this with all unique anchor text & links
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Closing down site and redirecting its traffic to another
OK - so we currently own two websites that are in the same industry. Site A is our main site which hosts real estate listings and rentals in Canada and the US. Site B hosts rentals in Canada only. We are shutting down site B to concentrate solely on Site A, and will be looking to redirect all traffic from Site B to Site A, ie. user lands on Toronto Rentals page on Site B, we're looking to forward them off to Toronto Rentals page on Site A, and so on. Site A has all the same locations and property types as Site B. On to the question: We are trying to figure out the best method of doing this that will appease both users and the Google machine. Here's what we've come up with (2 options): When user hits Site B via Google/bookmark/whatever, do we: 1. Automatically/instantly (301) redirect them to the applicable page on Site A? 2. Present them with a splash page of sorts ("This page has been moved to Site A. Please click the following link <insert anchor="" text="" rich="" url="" here="">to visit the new page.").</insert> We're worried that option #1 might confuse some users and are not sure how crawlers might react to thousands of instant redirects like that. Option #2 would be most beneficial to the end-user (we're thinking) as they're being notified, on page, of what's going on. Crawlers would still be able to follow the URL that is presented within the splash write-up. Thoughts? We've never done this before. It's basically like one site acquiring another site; however, in this case, we already owned both sites. We just don't have time to take care of Site B any longer due to the massive growth of Site A. Thanks for any/all help. Marc
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | THB0 -
Drop in non-branded organic search April 1
I saw an intense drop in non-branded organic search for major pages on my site on April 1st this year. The homepage wasn't affected and it's not an annual thing. I've attached a screen shot showing the drop. I'm new to the company and recently learned that they had hired a pretty black hat company last year and I'm worried that this is Panda...although the timing seems wrong. Has anyone experienced panda effects between the two updates? I'd love to get some feedback!! 1ry2a.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CIEEwebTeam0