Traffic drop after Facebook push
-
Hi all,
We experienced a strange phenonema after a Facebook push, it appears the Google organic traffic was all but dead for five days after. Totally not sure why!
It has since returned to about 80% of previous levels.
-
Hi,
When you say that referral traffic was unaffected - did you see the burst of traffic in Analytics or not?
In webmaster tools - do you see that clicks go down to zero during this timeframe. Was there an increased number of crawl errors during this period?
Was your site able to handle the traffic or did it go down - sometimes when sites are unstable or frequently offline Google temporary removes them from the SERP's until the situation has normalised.
Without additional info it's difficult to judge what exactly could be the cause. I never heard that a sudden peak of traffic from one source had an impact (in the negative sense) on search traffic - normally more visits from other sources are rather positive for your rankings.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Okay all, I'm going to mark this as solved. After digging deeper in the cPanel stats, it looks more like the whole site went offline for a couple days! Yikes.
| 12 Apr 2015 | 46 | 201 | 1,016 | 28.07 MB |
| 13 Apr 2015 | 356 | 752 | 9,115 | 239.04 MB |
| 14 Apr 2015 | 1,823 | 3,897 | 50,698 | 1.15 GB |
| 15 Apr 2015 | 289 | 602 | 6,375 | 175.32 MB |
| 16 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 17 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 18 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 19 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 21 Apr 2015 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 22 Apr 2015 | 28 | 51 | 603 | 13.89 MB |
| 23 Apr 2015 | 73 | 1,302 | 2,514 | 36.23 MB |
| 24 Apr 2015 | 65 | 167 | 1,111 | 28.60 MB |
| 25 Apr 2015 | 59 | 142 | 1,115 | 27.35 MB |
| 26 Apr 2015 | 56 | 101 | 1,134 | 27.36 MB |
| 27 Apr 2015 | 74 | 192 | 1,353 | 31.16 MB | -
Hi Dirk,
Nothing was changed during that time and it appears all the direct/social traffic was unaffected. It was as if the sudden rush of a thousand plus people over social caused an issue. I've never seen Google traffic zero out like that, in fact, it appears as if it was zero until WordPress automatically upgraded (that should have occurred on or around the 22nd).
-
Did you seem a similar drop in Webmaster tools?
When I see such a sudden drop & fast recovery my first guess would be that something went wrong with your analytics tag. How was you overall traffic during this period? Did you see the Facebook traffic appearing in referrals?
Apart from the Facebook push - did you do technical changes to your site in the same timeframe?
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
Keywords Dropping Out
Hi In March I've seen a lot of keywords go from being ranked, to dropping out completely. We usually get under 1000 drop in and out each month, but 2,500 dropped out this month. Some are not focus keywords I'd be concerned about, but then some are.... I am trying to work out why and could use some help. We haven't changed anything on the pages & here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates - previously ranked for 'Dollies' position 6 now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks - ranked position 11 for 'Folding Sack Truck' now unranked http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/portable-workbenches-trestles - ranked position 7 for portable workbenches now unranked. These pages do still rank for other keywords, so aren't out of Google completely. I'm just trying to identify if we have any other issues Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Website dropped out from Google index
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I got approached by my friend - their website is https://www.hauteheadquarters.com She is saying that they dropped from google index over night - and, as you can see if you google their name, website url or even site: , most of the pages are not indexed. Home page is nowhere to be found - that's for sure. I know that they were indexed before. Google webmaster tools don't have any manual actions (at least yet). No sudden changes in content or backlink profile. robots.txt has some weird rule - disallow everything for EtaoSpider. I don't know if google would listen to that - robots checker in GWT says it's all good. Any ideas why that happen? Any ideas what I should check? P.S. Just noticed in GWT there was a huge drop in indexed pages within first week of August. Still no idea why though. P.P.S. Just noticed that there is noindex x-robots-tag in headers... Anyone knows where this can be set?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK0 -
Keyword Rankings: One keyword dropped, dragging other rankings down. Possible or not?
Hey moz fans, So these week I noticed significant drop in rankings... But what caught my attention is that one specific keyword dropped 18 positions, and all the other just 1-3. Print screen: http://prntscr.com/7fb4g4 Do you think it's possible that the drop of that page, that went 18 positions down, brought the whole domain down? Or is it another cause?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kokolo0 -
What are your best moves if you want to get your traffic and rankings back for a specific keyword?
Hi all We are server and website monitoring company for over 13 years and I dare to say our product evolved and mastered over the years. Our marketing not so much. Most of our most convertible traffic came from the keyword "ping test" with our ping test tool page, and for the first 10 years we have been positioned 1-3 in Google.com so it was all good. The last two years we have been steady on positioned 8-9, and since 7-30-13 we are on the second page. We have launched a blog in 2009 at http://www.websitepulse.com/blog, and post 2-3 times a week, and are working on new website now, and my question is what is your advice in our situation? Aside from providing fresh content and launching a new website is there anything specific we could do at this stage to improve our position for "ping test"? Thanks Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wspwsp0 -
Organic Brand Traffic Tanking
Hey Guys, We recently launched a new website in late February. Since then, we have seen a drop in organic traffic from most of our top organic keywords. My major concern is the drop that we've seen from our branded keywords. Since the new site launch, our #1 organic traffic and revenue-driving keyword (brand name) dropped over 31%! It should be noted that all of our URLs changed, however, I've updated the sitemap in GWT and we have utilized 301 redirects on all old URLs. Any insights or recommendations on where I should be looking or what I should be doing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shorething0 -
Dropped Out of Google and Bing
I am helping with a site that at one time I had on page 1 for Google/Bing. Site started to slip in rankings, then someone else did a makeover of the store and botched things by renaming pages, having errors in pages (multiple head/body), mismatch page names from sitemap, etc. Site slipped to page 4/5. I righted things, fixed duplication using canonicalization, made some other changes. Now site is gone completely from Google/Bing for desired keyword. No penalties. Site still shows if do search on domain name. Site is www.plussizeplum.com (plus size lingerie, sorry), keyword target is plus size lingerie. Anyone have any clues, tips, etc on why we fell off the face of the earth? Page Authority/Domain Authority are both comparable to most of the page 1/2 sites for same thing. Thanks for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlcohen0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0