March 1st Decline in Visits and Pageviews

[modernmagic]

This site was upgraded from Joomla 1 to Joomla 3 and launched on Feb 27th.  The SEF structure has not changed.  The extension sh404sef tracks the 404s and there are only a few dozen from mistyped urls, so I have to assume the historical ranking has not been affected.

How can I figure out why there is such a decline on March 1st from 4400 to 1500 visits?

Is it coincidence after the new launch or did something happen with google on March 1st?

http://transitionconsultants.com

Screenshot%202014-04-11%2009.47.05.png

[JaneCopland]

Hi Jeff,

This is truly bizarre. The news that there is no drop in Webmaster Tools is very good though - you'd see something similar there if there was truly a traffic drop as opposed to a tracking problem.

I see you are using different GA accounts for each site - have you contacted the host? When I have seen tracking problems in the past that did not match up to actual traffic, it was because the JS code to trigger the analytics visit was being delayed or stopped by something else running on the site. For example, a custom analytics package my former agency built for one of our clients was not being triggered upon page load for two reasons. One, a heavy Conversion Rate Optimisation JS package was loading further up the page and taking an extremely long time, and two - most visitors clicked quickly to a target page, before the CRO JS and our JS could load properly.

[modernmagic]

Jane,

The page source shows that the GA code is on every page.

Since this is happening to all 14 sites I am managing in GA, many that have had the same GA code for years, I have to assume it does not have to do with the installation.

GWT shows the same weekly cycle of impression from 1500 on Mondays to 900 on Saturdays.  There is no additional drop on March 1st.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Jeff,

This sounds like a problem with the GA installation rather than actual traffic if you are not seeing this in the log file analyser for all these sites. Sounds really basic but have you checked that the GA code is included properly across the sites, especially the pages that have gone from 400 daily visits to 0?

If you're also running ranking reports and not seeing a drop in rankings, then the issue is almost certain to be reporting rather than actual traffic.

Do you see a drop in impressions / clicks in Webmaster Tools too?

[modernmagic]

This is a critical issue for me.

Is there anyone here that can help me resolve this server wide decline?

Or help me track down why GA is showing the decline but AWstats is not?

[modernmagic]

What would cause all the sites on the same VPS to show a decline in visits on GA but not on the servers AWstats?

[modernmagic]

However, when looking at the visits using AWstats I do not see the sharp decline on March 1st that I see in GA.

Screenshot%202014-04-11%2012.45.56.png

[modernmagic]

I am going through all google analytics for the sites that I manage and are all hosted on my VPS at siteground.

These sites also had a decline on March 1st.

• http://admarneuro.com
• http://heartland-designs.com/
• http://www.lawofficesofdanielkaminsky.com/
• http://www.ocjoomlausergroup.org/
• http://www.primocraft.com/
• http://www.modernmagic.com/
• http://azbaa.org/
• etc.... I'll stop here since it appears that all are affected.

Now, I think we are getting to the root of the problem.  It probably has to do with the host since every site shows the decline starting on March 1st.

Do you know what could make this happen on a VPS Cloud hosting account?

[modernmagic]

1. per GWT there is only 473 indexed from the sitemap.  How do I gauge if the 1000 is accurate.  When I search for site: transitionconsultants.com I see "About 7,300 results". Am I doing this wrong?

2. Is there any harm in resetting the URL params?  Seems like a lot of URLs being monitored. Did you see the screenshot?

3. Since I am the new webmaster, I am not sure what the ranking was before or what key phrases they were ranking highly for.  How do I figure this out?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

After doing a "site:", I am seeing almost 1,000 pages indexed by Google. Does this sound about right?

It is possible parameters have changed, but I don't feel this is the issue.

What are you seeing when you look at your search phrases in the SERPs? Have key phrases dropped a bit, a lot or not at all?

-Andy

[modernmagic]

The previous webmaster had possibly set up all these URL parameters.  I do not know if I should reset these as they were in place before the migration but maybe the parameters have changed and these are now dropping pages from the index.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/30q8ba7winj7tt8/Screenshot 2014-04-11 11.12.01.png

Screenshot%202014-04-11%2011.12.01.png

[modernmagic]

1. Sitemap appears to be ok

   |   | http://transitionconsultants.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&view=xml&tmpl=component&id=1 | Sitemap | Apr 10, 2014 | - | Web | 487 | 473 |

2. "No manual webspam actions found."

3. Yes, new content has been added.

4. No new link-building.

5. OSE:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1nlz93ghrrxmu1/Screenshot 2014-04-11 11.08.59.png

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If it wasn't for the fact that this has happened just 3 days after the move, then I would have put this down to a Google penalty, without a doubt.

However, this would be one heck of a coincidence! I'm not ruling that out, but can't help but feel something else might have gone unchecked.

• Is the sitemap intact and correct?
• Have there been any manual actions in GWT?
• Has any new content been added?
• Has there been any link-building going on, or have you had a look at your link profile through Open Site Explorer?

-Andy

[modernmagic]

I just ran it through the Screaming Frog SEO Spider app and all 467 URLs are 200-OK.

All pages show the same decline from the same date.

And pages like this went from 400 pageviews to 0 on March 1st:  http://transitionconsultants.com/practices-for-sale/dental-practices/

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Jeff,

Have you run the site through Screaming Frog to see if there has been anything inadvertently changed during the transition? It is more common than you might realise across many different platforms.

It might also be worth looking to make sure there are no canonical issues, pages accidentally noindexed, etc.

Outside of that, the last confirmed update was early February (Page Layout), so it is unlikely to have been this. That said, they are always tweaking and releasing new updates and refreshes, so it is very possible that that has also happened.

With the decline in visitors, is that for traffic across the board to all pages, or just to the homepage and for a specific phrase?

-Andy