Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Researching search volume drop

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Researching search volume drop

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    4
    2091
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • MarkWill
      MarkWill last edited by

      I am seeing a pretty precipitous drop in search volume traffic (see link). My keyword rankings don't seem to have suffered too much over this period. In fact, my #1 keyword have actually increased slightly in this timeframe.

      Two questions...

      • Is there some way to assess overall search volume across my tracked keywords (to see if this is just a case of overall searches dropping)?
      • Is there a recommended plan of attack for investigating drops like this - beyond overall search volume, what other data might be important in identifying the cause of this. In short, I'm looking for some logic/structure for how I investigate this, using Moz tools and reports.

      Thanks.

      Mark

      omE1VPc

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MarkWill
        MarkWill last edited by

        Awesome responses everyone - really appreciate this. It seems I have my work cut out across the various tools to try to identify root cause. At first, quick glance I don't see anything obvious popping up (for example to organic vs. direct) but I have more to check, based on the excellent input from the three of you. Thank you again!

        Mark

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ClaytonJ
          ClaytonJ last edited by

          Have you checked on WMT's?  For Impressions for those keywords and CTR? That is the starting point in my view.  If you CTR is steady and your impressions have dropped significantly you have to work out what pages you have dropped off - it may not necessarily be the main keyword.

          I would start on WMT's..

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD last edited by

            If you wanted to look at relative search volume, you can look at Google Trends https://www.google.com/trends/   I would also see if you notice any trends in Google Search Console under Search Traffic > Search Analytics > Impressions

            What your graph has me wondering is if this is an attribution issue with GA?  On the grey line, Moz is simply taking your GA traffic that is tagged as organic and showing it in the graph.  If you have an attribution issue in GA, organic traffic may be showing up as direct traffic.  If there is anything wonky in the traffic attribution, GA will put it as Direct. You have this classic article by Groupon that was a good example of how organic can be attributed incorrectly.   http://searchengineland.com/60-direct-traffic-actually-seo-195415

            Look at your overall traffic in GA and then add a segment for organic traffic and then direct traffic.  If your overall traffic is constant and you see organic going down while direct traffic is going up, you have your answer.    As I understand it, this phenomenon is due to browser issues, so see if you have had more traffic recently from a given browser and that may give you another clue.

            Another thing to check, you should be able to look at your organic traffic in GA and see if it is the same as Moz, or not. If not, ping the Moz folks to make sure your data from GA is coming in properly.  May be some data import issues there.

            My other guess here is that your ranking is ok, but your click rate has been jacked.  Google Search console will show you CTR over time, and that may help.  Look and see, did you change meta descriptions?  Did you change up your schema markup so previously you had rich snippets in the SERP, but now you do not.  You could potentially keep ranking, but loose CTR.

            These are all things I would look at, but at this point, your guess is as good as mine.  Looking through the above will probably prompt you to check other things that might give you an answer.

            Good luck!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • inhouseninja

              Huge Drop in Direct Traffic in G4

              google analytics direct traffic

              Our direct traffic dropped 50% in October. Is anyone else seeing a drop in direct traffic in October in G4? It hasn't shifted to another source or unassigned it's just gone. Has anyone else experienced this and what might be the reasons?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseninja
              1
            • remcoz

              How get google reviews on search results?

              on page optimization

              Hi, We have good google reviews. (4,8) Can we get this rating stars also on our organic search results ? Best remco

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remcoz
              0
            • DmitriiK

              Optimization for "Search by Photos" feature

              Howdy, fellow mozzers, Does anyone know what affects a given company photos show up in the "Search by Photos" section? I can't find any decent info.. Here is the link to SEL, describing the feature (not even google themselves seem to have an announcement about it). https://searchengineland.com/google-showing-mobile-search-by-photos-option-in-selected-local-verticals-323237 Thanks in advance!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DmitriiK
              2
            • mianazeem418

              Suddenly keywords Disappeared from Google Search Results

              Hello Guys Please help me, suddenly all of my site's keywords are disappeared from google search result, most of keywords are no.1 on google but today after 6pm i see the traffic decreasing and when i search my keywords there is no any keywords in search result. Only homepage keyword is showing. Please Help what is Happening with me.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mianazeem418
              0
            • Mat_C

              How do internal search results get indexed by Google?

              Hi all, Most of the URLs that are created by using the internal search function of a website/web shop shouldn't be indexed since they create duplicate content or waste crawl budget. The standard way to go is to 'noindex, follow' these pages or sometimes to use robots.txt to disallow crawling of these pages. The first question I have is how these pages actually would get indexed in the first place if you wouldn't use one of the options above. Crawlers follow links to index a website's pages. If a random visitor comes to your site and uses the search function, this creates a URL. There are no links leading to this URL, it is not in a sitemap, it can't be found through navigating on the website,... so how can search engines index these URLs that were generated by using an internal search function? Second question: let's say somebody embeds a link on his website pointing to a URL from your website that was created by an internal search. Now let's assume you used robots.txt to make sure these URLs weren't indexed. This means Google won't even crawl those pages. Is it possible then that the link that was used on another website will show an empty page after a while, since Google doesn't even crawl this page? Thanks for your thoughts guys.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
              0
            • angelamaemae

              Search console validation taking a long time?

              Hello! I did something dumb back in the beginning of September. I updated Yoast and somehow noindexed a whole set of custom taxonomy on my site. I fixed this and then asked Google to validate the fixes on September 20. Since then they have gotten through only 5 of the 64 URLS.....is this normal? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something that I should be doing. Thank you! ^_^

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | angelamaemae
              0
            • Lauriedechaseaux

              Displaying Vanity URL in Google Search Result

              Hi Moz! Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there any way to tell Google to display a vanity URL (that has been 301d) instead of the actual URL in the SERP? Example: www.domainA.com is a vanity URL (bought specifically for Brand Identity reasons) that redirects to www.domainB.com. Is it possible to have the domainA Url show up in Google for a Branded search query? Thanks in advance! Arjun

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lauriedechaseaux
              0
            • Wagada

              Incorrect URL shown in Google search results

              Can anyone offer any advice on how Google might get the url which it displays in search results wrong? It currently appears for all pages as: <cite>www.domainname.com › Register › Login</cite> When the real url is nothing like this. It should be: www.domainname.com/product-type/product-name. This could obviously affect clickthroughs. Google has indexed around 3,000 urls on the site and they are all like this. There are links at the top of the page on the website itself which look like this: Register » Login » which presumably could be affecting it? Thanks in advance for any advice or help!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wagada
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.