Drop in traffic at start of December 2014

[Bike_Co-op_Webmaster]

Hello!

I've noticed a drop in organic Google traffic to our ecommerce site. The drop started on the 1st December 2014. The difference compared with last year is around -25%.

I've taken a look at landing pages for the organic Google traffic:

Homepage: -40%
Product pages: -31%
Category pages: -7%
Blog pages: -7%

On the 1st December our site was down for a few hours in the early morning for some scheduled maintenance.  I got a couple of emails from Google Webmaster Tools letting me know that there was an "Increase in server errors" and "Googlebot can't access your site". Once the site maintenance was complete there haven't been any further emails from Google about this.  I doubt the site being down is the cause of the drop in traffic.

I suspect it may have been caused by the latest Penguin updates around the end of November 2014. Can anyone advise if this sounds like it is the cause, and why the homepage and products pages have been hit so severely?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

[Bike_Co-op_Webmaster]

Many thanks Dirk, looks like you've found the problem!  Much appreciated!

[DirkC]

Dave,

While checking your site, it seems that the tracking code is not always loaded - so probably it's more a technical glitch after the maintenance. Not clear what is causing it - when you install the tag assistant plugin you will see yourself. Seems to happen on first visit.

When it's not loaded your source (homepage) looks like this:

Dirk

[DirkC]

Hi Dave,

How is overall traffic - did you see the same traffic drop. Sometimes Google traffic is reported as referrer traffic (for one of the sites I manage which is largely dependant on image search almost all google traffic is reported as referrer rather than search traffic)

I noticed that you're using a (very) old version of the GA tracker - consider updating to the last version (universal). If I check the page with the Tag Assistant plugin I get 3 warnings (sync version / code outside head / depreciated method get_tracker)

Dirk

[Bike_Co-op_Webmaster]

Thanks for the replies everyone!  I've had a closer look at our backlinks and there a few low quality ones in there, but the vast majority seem okay to me.

One thing I have noticed while digging about in more depth in WMT is that there is not a noticeable decline in clicks or impressions within the "Search Queries" section.  Does this suggest there is an issue with how our GA is recording the visits from organic?

The domain name is www.edinburghbicycle.com.

[DirkC]

Dave,

I doubt that the downtime (especially because it has been only a few hours) has anything to do with the drop in traffic. In my experience, even an unscheduled downtime of 24hr doesn't have any impact on SEO traffic.

If you are hit by Penguin, check your low quality links in Google Webmastertools, and try to contact the sites to eliminate the links to your site (if the link quality is very low, almost impossible to get these links removed). For the ones that do not answer, disavow the links.

Do the same for low quality links you can find using other tools: ahrefs.com, majesticseo.com, opensiteexplorer.com.

Check the profile of Marie Haynes - she has quite some experience on link removal and unnatural links & has written some interesting stuff about it http://moz.com/community/users/308135 - check the posts at the bottom of her profile.

Dirk

[Casey_Meraz]

Are you able to share the domain name? This can at least give us some more insight as to what may have occurred.

[Bike_Co-op_Webmaster]

Hi Laura,

It was indeed the timing that made me suspect Penguin!  Our backlink profile could be better.  Is there a good way of remedying this sort of backlink issue?

The maintenance was just an update to the web server hardware and OS, and I'm not aware of any new competitors, so I suspect it is Penguin that is causing the drop in traffic.

[LauraSultan]

Is timing the only thing that makes you suspect Penguin is the cause of the drop in traffic? What does your backlink profile look like? Are there tons of spammy links to your site? If so, then you may be right about Penguin.

It's impossible to say what caused the drop based solely on the information you've provided. I highly doubt that a few hours of downtime had anything to do with your drop in traffic.

Other questions to consider:

• Have you made any significant changes to your website within the last three months? (What kind of maintenance was actually performed on the site?)
• Are there any new competitors pushing you out of the SERPs?

[GPainter]

Could it also be part of the "penguin double take" or "roll back"  as seen here- http://algoroo.com/ ?