Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic

[LizIslCo]

We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc...

We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend.

I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is.

I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed.

I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic.

Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?

[EGOL]

I would work on other things for a few days.

If your sales or other conversions are holding up then don't worry.

Fewer spiders can be a good thing.   You can go into webmaster tools to see if google is still visiting (look under crawl stats).

[LizIslCo]

thanks for the responses! all good things to know.

at what point should I start to worry?

[EGOL]

A lot of analytics programs include robot visits in the direct traffic.  Could simply be fewer scrapers or a change in spidering patterns.

If your conversions are holding up I would not worry about this.

[LizIslCo]

Yup, I mean direct traffic. The referral traffic and traffic from search has stayed at normal levels. Only our direct traffic has dropped.

Our rankings have not fallen.

It is possible that our URLs were modified without proper redirects but I doubt it. The URLs that existed before the changes are the same, the only ones that have changed are the ones we either removed (obsolete categories) or newly created.

What other pieces of information should I provide to give you a better idea?

[EGOL]

Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic....

Do you really mean direct - like people typing in your URL or using bookmarks?  Or, are you asking about total traffic from search and other sources?

Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?

You have access to more information than we do.  Check your analytics to see where your site has lost traffic.

Have your rankings fallen?

When your site was modified were URLs changed without redirects?

You have not provided enough information for anything other than guesses from us.