Why would our client's site be receiving significant levels of organic traffic for a keyword they do not rank for?

[mrdavidingram]

We have a client that has received 100+ organic visits for the keyword 'airport transfers', yet the site does not rank in the top 100 search results for this keyword. We have checked that it is not untagged PPC traffic. Truly baffling. Can anybody help?

[JaneCopland]

Hi David,

Did you manage to see where these visits were coming from yet? Agree with many posters below that 100+ visits from Google would be surprising given that Google does not report 99% of organic keyword data anymore. Were the visits from other search engines?

[DennisSeymour]

Hi David,

• You might be seeing them from analytics or your site stats so they are probably from Bing or another search engine.

• Billy's point is also a possibility.

[FredRoven]

I have a similar question.  I am just beginning to use MOZ.  Trying to understand why a page that is rated A has dropped from 10 to 45 in Google for a specific keyword yet other keywords that are rated F have and still do rank in top 5 in Google.  I am on the east coast and had them tested in mid west with same results.  This is true for what I believe should be our best keywords for good organic results and are in the top 10 in our Google source report.  I really appreciate the help.  Our PPC seems to be working great in all selected areas (worldwide) and locally page 1 for Google+ and paid ads.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

You are correct Billy. I am not referring to G+ local results really. More that the organic sites are delivered based upon my IP & location. If I fire up HideMyAss and set it to Manchester, I will get sites local to there.

-Andy

[Vizergy]

We don't mean Google Local specifically - at least I didn't and I don't think Andy did as well (but I can not speak for him).  We mean If you, Andy and I all typed in 'airport transfers' in to Google, we would all get different results due to our being in totally different places in the world.

Now, we would all probably use whatever method we like to get unpersonalized/un-local results but most people wouldn't do that.  So although your client doesn't appear to rank for that term... maybe they do right in their area...

I could, of course, be totally wrong... just thought Andy's idea made sense.

[dsinger]

in analytics, you can pretty easily tell what visits came through local (Google + Local anyway).  The keyword will be replaced by the click through url.

You can rule in/out Google Local by looking at keyword as a secondary dimension.

[Vizergy]

I think that is the most likely cause.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

It could be that there is an element of local search results creeping in.

If I search for 'Airport Transfers' from here, then I get companies who are in Chester (UK).

-Andy

[StreamlineMetrics]

Are these 100+ visits from 100+ different users? It could be just one user who initially came to the site for that keyword and kept coming directly back to the site but GA is counting it as another visit for that keyword.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Where are you getting this data from? Perhaps "organic" means bing/yahoo/other search engines - where your client is ranking.

[danwebman]

They may be getting traffic from search engines other than Google. Have you checked the Google Analytics to determine which Search Engine the traffic is coming from? Are they getting traffic from Google Images? or Video?