Huge Dip in Traffic Last Week - New Algo Update?
-
Hi Mozzers,
We experienced a huge dip in traffic on Thursday, 8/14, across our entire site. It was not a specific set of pages, it was sitewide. Google Webmaster Tools notes our impressions are down as well. The traffic has not recovered. It appears our pages are still indexed in Google, just not ranking well.
Here are some questions I have to help isolate the cause:
- We recently completed a major redesign of our entire website on 7/26. We did not notice any dip in traffic after the new design launch - in fact, it actually increased a bit. Is it possible that only now Google sees our new site design and this is the reason for our dip? Is there a way to see Google's past cache dates?
- Did anyone else experience a similar dip in traffic since Thursday?
- Was there a recent Google update?
It would be much appreciated if someone takes a look at our site - www.consumerbase.com for any glaring SEO errors (missing necessary meta tags, etc.).
What steps do you guys suggest I take to isolate the cause in this dip in traffic?
Thanks!
-
There was a Panda update that happened on September 5th. For reference:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-update-19126.html
http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/panda-update-september-5-2014/
-
Hey There
Few recommendations;
-
Your robots.txt may be blocking CSS/JS - http://www.consumerbase.com/robots.txt which is now something Google recommends NOT blocking. See this article for backstory and about the fetch and render tool in webmaster tools.
-
How long has the homepage redirected to /index.html? Google does they they actually sort this out for you, and it doesn't quite cause the harm some people assume - but it can't hurt to use the normal domain for the homepage.
-
This one returns a 404 http://www.consumerbase.com/index.php
-
One troubling issue is that bad URLs don't return a 404, they 301 to the homepage: http://www.consumerbase.com/bad - I'd highly consider using a standard 404 not found response code with an error message.
-
This ALSO makes it impossible to run a proper crawl test on the site to check for bad pages. It's possible old pages are not being 301 redirected to the right new pages when they break, and you're losing traffic because Google won't pass value if the redirects don't match in content (more info here)
Did you change URLs with the redesign? It doesn't look like it, but just checking. You may want to export a list of trafficked pages prior to the migration from analytics, and run a crawl test on them. As said above, this is almost impossible to test properly right now because bad URLs 301, and aren't being picked up as 404s.
In terms of next steps. You have to get really granular. Segment, segment, segment - and isolate things until you find a "smoking gun" (which you don't always find, but you should look for).
The redesign date seems suspect - and your increase in traffic could have been in the lag time Google has from crawling and caching the updated site. It's just my hunch about the redesign - I'd look thoroughly everywhere.
-
-
To my knowledge this was just speculation by the author "reading between the lines" and there was no such update.
-
1. Google likes to see fresh new content, so the fact that you saw an increase in your ranking for a short period is not a huge surprise. Once they crawled all the pages, you saw the realistic position of your pages.
"Is there a way to see Google's past cache dates?"
You could try using this:
http://www.googleguide.com/cached_pages.html2. We moved down one spot. Doesn't look like it.
I think you are seeing movement due to an error in the sites documents, meaning redirects, sitemaps, etc. Check to make sure all items and old pages have been redirected and resubmitted.
-
There's a good chance that the issues you're experiencing are related to your redesign, but as an FYI there has been rumblings of a Penguin update over the past week or so. There's a bit more coverage over at SERoundtable, which might be worth taking a look at: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-three-19009.html
-
Why does your site redirect to index.html when i goto the url ?
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
-
Content update on 24hr schedule
Hello! I have a website with over 1300 landings pages for specific products. These individual pages update on a 24hr cycle through out API. Our API pulls reviews/ratings from other sources and then writes/updates that content onto the page. Is that 'bad"? Can that be viewed as spammy or dangerous in the eyes of google? (My first thought is no, its fine) Is there such a thing as "too much content". For example if we are adding roughly 20 articles to our site a week, is that ok? (I know news websites add much more than that on a daily basis but I just figured I would ask) On that note, would it be better to stagger our posting? For example 20 articles each week for a total of 80 articles, or 80 articles once a month? (I feel like trickle posting is probably preferable but I figured I would ask.) Is there any negatives to the process of an API writing/updating content? Should we have 800+ words of static content on each page? Thank you all mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Huge Spike in Organic/Direct traffic from Mexico
So here's my situation: My company's website usually receives around 80 organic visits/month and 50 direct visits/month from Mexico. However, in July we saw a small uptick to around 170 for each and then in the last 7 days we are in the middle of a massive spike which has put us up to 1400 visits for organic and 820 visits for direct in August. The traffic spike continues as we are almost up to 500 visits just today! Things to know: The visitors are purchasing from our store, staying on our site, browsing around, basically acting like real traffic. I was unable to identify any new links, press, and we did not do any specific Mexico optimization (spanish keywords). We sell a ball and it is called The One World Futbol, but it's always been called a futbol before so nothing new here. our website is www.oneworldplayproject.com. Everyone coming organically is searching our name, not keywords. We updated our shopping cart a few days before the massive traffic spike and significantly lowered the cost to ship to Mexico. Our Latin America director went to Mexico to work there for a month a few days before the spike and sent out a bunch of emails, texts, phone calls, what's app notifications to his large network. From what I am told by others here he has a vast network throughout Mexico, Central America and South America. We have also seen large traffic increases in other Latin American countries during this same time period just nothing like Mexico. We just hired an awesome social media coordinator who is extremely focused and is implementing a kick-ass social strategy We launched a branding campaign called #MakeLifePlayFull with press releases and ad spend behind it. PHEW! That was a lot of info for you to digest. So on the surface this seems like great news. BUT I want to understand WHY this is happening. Could it really just be the combination of all these things listed above or is it just a combination of our connected guy being in Mexico with better shipping costs? Why is it mainly happening in Mexico? Why is it so sustained? I suspect that if it is from our guy it would drop off quickly. Any thoughts on what to look at? I'm stumped.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_OWPP0 -
Spike then Drop in Direct Traffic?
We've been doing some SEO work over the last few weeks and earlier this week we saw a large spike in traffic. Yay we all thought, but then yesterday the traffic levels returned to pre-celebratory levels. I've been doing some digging to try and find out what was different Monday and Tuesday this week. Mondays are usually big traffic days for us anyway, but this week was by far the biggest, and Tuesday was even higher still, our best day ever. After some poking, I found that the direct traffic followed the same pattern as our overall traffic levels (image attached). The first spike coincides with an email we sent out that day, but the later spike we just don't know where it came from? I understand loosely that direct isn't easily traceable, but can anyone help us understand more about this second spike? Thanks! ayqL2wi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
Huge Google Dance For Some Rankings. What Gives?
I've got a relatively new website (launched at the beginning of June 2013). For some keywords I'm targeting, it first ranked around page 15. It made huge jumps to finally rank on page 2 or 3. Since then, it goes back to page 15 and then back to page 3. It does this every now and then. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Massive decreases in traffic
Hi i've been looking at the affects of googles algorithmic updates over the last couple years and the impact on sites/competitors i have been monitoring in the space. Two sites which surprised me, in having a dramatic decline in search traffic were: kriskris.com (over 200k visitors to around 10k) only-cookware.com (from 40k visitors at its peak to only around 1000k) (semrush traffic data attached) Both sites have great quality content and social signals. The only thing i can think of is a over-optimization of anchor text, and types of links. dnrm0Oa.png cuaLzrI.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
How is it possible to 301 specific pages to a new domain?
The old site is small, only 100 pages or so, and about 10 of them are particularly useful. I would like to 301 those 10 pages to 10 similar pages on the new site, and also 301 the other 90 pages to the new site... the new site's home page, I suppose. Does it make sense to do this and if so how? I think if I simply 301 the whole of the old domain to the new one, the juice will be shared among the new site's page equally which is not what I want. I know where the htaccess file is and I can 301 a page within a domain but I'm at a loss with this. Thanks for any help. EDIT: I'm hoping for something like this: old.com/page_1 >> new.com/page_A old.com/page_2 >> new.com/page_B ... and 8 more of those And then the other 90 pages: old.com/Remaining pages >> new.com/index
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
Grading issues on my weekly report
Hi just had my weekly report on my website to show me how i am ranking in the search engines and i am puzzled, i have not changed my page except from one paragraph and the page has gone from a grade a to a grade f. can anyone explain how this works out
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How long a domain's bad reputation last?
I catched a dropped domain with a nice keyword, but poor reputation. It used to have some malware on the site and WOT (site review tool available at Chrome among others) has very negative reviews tied to the site. I guess that Google has to have records about that as well, because Chrome used to prompt a warning when I entered the site. My question is: how long will the bad reputation last if I build a legitimate website there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zapalka0