Image Search / sudden drop in traffic
-
One of our sites in Germany had a very sudden drop in traffic (starting Oct. 7th). The site gets most of it's organic traffic from Image Search. Checking in Search Console revealed that
- search volume for keywords increased in that period
- our average position is stable
- our click rate dropped dramatically
(we double checked - searching the keyword in "anonymous mode" still showed our results for main keywords in top image positions (first 2 rows)).
As an example (see attached screencopy) - keyword had clickrate of 1% (average) - dan dropped to 0.06% while the position remained stable.
Germany is still using the "old" version of image search (unlike the rest of the world) - which gives the site preview rather than just the image slider when you click on a result in image search. Our first thought that this was changed - but it seems that it didn't change.
Ideas what might cause this dramatic drop in click%?
There have been no major technical modifications on the site for the last 2 months.
thanks,
Dirk
-
Thanks everybody for your help.
We are still figuring out why the click rate in WMT has dropped but we discovered the main reason of our traffic drop. Our external advertising company had added a Analytics tracker in an external script which was interfering with the normal measurements.
When I checked the codes last week with the Chrome plugin everything was fine but I was visiting the site with my Ad blocker activated (so the external script wasn't called). When I visited the site today with Ad block de-activated it indicated that our tag wasn't measuring. The external tracking code was removed & traffic went back to previous levels (it's a bit scary to realise that about 50% of our visits have the ad blocker activated)
Dirk
-
Hi John,
URL: goo.gl/gPC9FY - we rank high for all keywords containing the words "malvorlage" or "ausmalbild" + keyword - like "malvorlage stern"
Titles - no changes on titles recently - as most images were labeled with Malvorlage & we noticed that Ausmalbild became more popular - the new images we added were using "Ausmalbild" as title rather than "malvorlage"
Layout - that was one of the first things I considered - given the fact that the image search in Germany is still on the old presentation (preview of site rather than slider). We checked this and it seems that it's still the old version which is used.
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk -
Very interesting case going on here. A few more questions (the URL would be helpful if you are keen to share it as well):
- Anything change around your titles of images? Or those of your competitors?
- Do you track rankings on these other than what Search Console has? "Average rank" is pretty unhelpful sometimes, I'm afraid.
- Did Google maybe change the layout of the SERPs where you had images showing up, so that the images are getting less exposure in the search results?
John
-
Hi Egol,
Know exactly what you mean - we had this on our Spanish site after a less successful (to put it mildly) site migration - our images remained in the search results however the site was no longer ours but from someone else (that was also the moment we discovered all our images were spread all over the web...). Multiple complaints (and months) later the site started gaining traffic again.
It doesn't seem the case here - I did manually check key images - and the site behind is always ours. I also used the "search by image" to see how many times it was copied - and although copies existed - it were mainly smaller sizes on non concurrential sites (like schools).
Positions remain good to excellent. Even more amazing is that for some keywords the position improved more or less at the same time as the drop in CTR
Can't understand why the click rate decreased that dramatically.
Dirk
-
I have the same problem. The graphs look the same. What's happening is that infringers grab my images and replace my site in the image search results. Then my images on their sites replace my images on my site part of the time in the search results. The result is a loss of traffic. The result is no change in my average rankings and a loss of impressions.
A casual check of the search results shows my images, but when I look closer they are often on other domain and those other domains are getting my traffic.
Google is not doing a good job of attributing images to their creator - even if they have a copyright mark on them. Pop-up infringers can grab them and get good results in the image results almost instantly.
I fight this by filing DMCA complaints every week. Over time I have filed hundreds of DMCA complaints. Dozens of DMCA complaints have been filed for some of my images, for the same search queries on dozens of different sites. If you scroll down to the bottom of the image search you will see Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint, Complaint,....... for all of the complaints that I have filed.
Lots of this infringement is hosted on blogspot sites. Most of the infringers are monetize by Adsense.
Doing a few image queries and filing DMCA complaints is now part of our routine weekly duties. Plus we often drop what we are doing at other times because we see a drop in traffic on important pages, and damn that is coming from weasels stealing our images.
-
Hi Rob
forgot to mention that - analytics was the first thing I checked and is working fine. That's why I checked search console.
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
I know you said there have been no serious technical changes in the last couple months, but is it possible the UA Tracking Code (GA) has been removed? We had a client that underwent a similar decrease in traffic without any noticeable ranking changes, and it turns out their web developer had removed the tracking code.
Have the metrics been in consistent freefall (or plateaued out) since you noticed the decrease?
Let me know,
Rob
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
-
Drupal, http/https, canonicals and Google Search Console
I’m fairly new in an in-house role and am currently rooting around our Drupal website to improve it as a whole. Right now on my radar is our use of http / https, canonicals, and our use of Google Search Console. Initial issues noticed: We serve http and https versions of all our pages Our canonical tags just refer back to the URL it sits on (apparently a default Drupal thing, which is not much use) We don’t actually have https properties added in Search Console/GA I’ve spoken with our IT agency who migrated our old site to the current site, who have recommended forcing all pages to https and setting canonicals to all https pages, which is fine in theory, but I don’t think it’s as simple as this, right? An old Moz post I found talked about running into issues with images/CSS/javascript referencing http – is there anything else to consider, especially from an SEO perspective? I’m assuming that the appropriate certificates are in place, as the secure version of the site works perfectly well. And on the last point – am I safe to assume we have just never tracked any traffic for the secure version of the site? 😞 Thanks John
Technical SEO | | joberts0 -
Site dropped from SERP
Hello, I've been ranking a site for the last 5 months with good success, ranking on the first page for a high traffic keyword. In the beginning of September however, my site completely dropped out of the SERPs for several of those keywords yet my site was still indexed and there was no penalty applied to my site via search console. I would assume this maybe because of the update during the time.My site came back again a week later and it was ranking much higher on the first page (#2). Today, I just checked the SERPs and my site is now gone again. It was there this morning but now as of two hours ago it is gone, as well as one of my main competitors. My site is still indexed and no penalties via search console. Does anyone know what causes these types of issues? Im assuming my site will come back in a week or so with hopefully the same or better ranking, but when I have disruptions like this it really hurts my organic traffic. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KathleenDC0 -
Different user experience with javascript on/off
I was wondered if the site is serving different user experience when JS is disabled is sort of cloaking
Technical SEO | | John_Smith_0 -
Why my website main page suddenly disappear from Google search?
Hello friends, I need help . I lost everything , i don't know what happen to my website (hindustanfoods.com). My site is suddenly disappear from google search .. In 2013 it was on first page on top but suddenly this i lost my position not only position i lost from any pages. It is not showing anywhere. I have hosted a temp domain which links to some of the restaurant to our main (hindustanfoods.com) website and this website is seems good on google search where it has only 4 or 5 page website and main website has good pages. Somebody help should we need to work from start...................please help me
Technical SEO | | Tufail0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
What is the best way to upload an image for SEO
I have a site that is largely based on images. It runs on Wordpress. Each page has about 10 images. What is the best way to upload images? As a WP gallery. As another gallery (with a gallery plugin) As seperate images uploaded via WP (it shows a thumbnail which is links to the larger image). That way each image can have a title. As seperate images uploaded via FTP in which case I would then make a thumbnail which will link to the larger image. This option would only be good if WP does not optomize the thumbnail images that it creates. As a text title which links to the image. Since most of my content is based on images and mostly comes from Google images I was wondering what the best method to use is.
Technical SEO | | nicolebd0 -
Several Keywords Dropped Completely
On December 14th one of my sites dropped completely for multiple keywords. I cannot figure out why this happened. I have been adding content more in the past few months than ever before... www.howtomac.com is the website I am attaching a few webmasters screenshots so you can see the drop. Any help is much appreciated. htm-webmasters-0.jpg
Technical SEO | | 38wesley1