Diganosing Traffic Drop
-
With Spring Break and seasonality in play right now I'm curious about techniques for separating/diagnosing temporary drops in interest due to user behavior in a category from other things like drop in ranking or similar. How quickly can you tell these apart? Analytics will be delayed a few days for instance, other tools take time to update. What should we be looking for and when to say "ok, this too shall pass" as opposed to "did we make a bad site update" or something similar. Any tips?
-
Hi there.
Well, Analytics has only couple hours delay, not days, that's where I'd look. Also even Google rankings algos have some delay, so you won't really be able to 100% see how the changes affected the positions.
Also look at past year behavior, if it's seasonal, you will see the repetitive traffic behavior in Google Analytics. Other than that I don't think there is anything to go by immediately besides intuition and experience.
Hope this helps.
-
If you're using Google Analytics and have connected it to your Webmaster Console account, the quick and dirty high-level way to do this is to hit up the Queries report (Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Queries) and compare two time ranges. If your average position is unchanged (or up!) but your impressions are down, that would imply a change in marketplace demand. It's not perfect, but it's good for an at-a-glance gut check.
Digging deeper, I like to keep a rank checker running just for this kind of research. The rules here are basically the same as playing the stock market: Don't fuss over it every day. Set it up and leave it alone to quietly track and gather data for the day when you finally need it. I like rank trackers that check daily so I'm not fretting for a week or more over an aberrant result. The more granular data is more meaningful.
If it's not a change in rankings, it may be a change in demand. Use GA or whatever analytics suite you're using to view last year's traffic at this time next to this year's traffic. Are the spikes and dips happening at the same time every year? That's probably a natural seasonal fluctuation. You'll also be able to see roughly when you can expect traffic to rebound.
Another thing to look for in your analytics is which specific pages saw the biggest drops, and if any saw traffic increase instead. Demand doesn't always simply drop off - sometimes it shifts from one product offering to another. If it has, is there anything you can do to give it a boost?
If you don't have enough data in analytics to suss out your seasonal patterns, plug your top keywords into Google Trends and take a long view. Does search volume appear to fluctuate seasonally around the periods you're seeing it happen on your own site?
Hope that's helpful. Good luck!
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
-
COVID-19 Impacts on Traffic?
How many people here have witnessed some decline in traffic due to pandemic..? It's a thought that since people all around the world are in home and the usage of internet has increased a great deal the traffic on sites should also increase but that is not the case with me on different websites in past 3 weeks... How many people have witnessed the traffic difference ever since the pandemic started or from start of the month of March..? Share your thoughts.
Search Behavior | | asifseo0981 -
Dark Traffic & Long URLs - Clarification
Hi everyone, I've been reading the 2017 report by Groupon and the 2017 article by Neil Patel r.e. dark traffic. Both of these articles work on the assumption that most long URLs are not direct traffic because people wouldn't type a long URL into their browser. However, what happens to me personally all the time is that I start typing a URL into the browser, and the browser brings up a list of pages I've visited recently, and I click on some super long URL that I didn't bookmark but have visited in the past. That is legitimate direct traffic, but it's a long URL. I'm just wondering if there's something flawed in my reasoning or in the reasoning of Patel and Groupon. Maybe most people aren't relying on browsers like I am, or maybe things have changed a lot in the past 3 years. What do you think? And are there any more recent resources/articles that you would recommend r.e. trying to parse out dark traffic? https://neilpatel.com/blog/dark-traffic-stealing-data/ Thanks!
Search Behavior | | LivDetrick0 -
Search Analytics update in Google Webmasters Tools? Where can we find search queries bringing traffic to website?
I just got up and see Search Analytic's being updated today totally. Their is no option to see old reports. As Search Analytics only share 999 keywords.
Search Behavior | | csfarnsworth
Whats next now?
How can a webmaster finds all search queries bringing traffic to his website?
Any paid or free tool?
Google Analytic's > Acquisition > Search engine optimization > search queries will this area helps? Whole question revolves around. Any good tool that will help you find all the queries bringing traffic to my website?0 -
International Traffic on Analytics - Is this normal?
Hi All, One of our clients has asked why they are getting so much traffic from international countries when they solely operate in the UK. See attached image for % of customers who are visiting our site from different countries. Is this a normal ratio of traffic when we are only targeting UK customers? Thanks o6j2PEc
Search Behavior | | O2C0 -
HUGE spike in Google Analytics Traffic
Hi there, I am witnessing a giant spike in my Google Analytics data (website: www.exchangecapital.com ) and I am completely stumped. My website usually gains roughly 15-20 visitors a day at most--and as of 11:10 am today my sessions for the day are up to 150. The traffic spike started on Friday at 132 sessions, Saturday at 261, Sunday at 247, etc. It's common that our sessions don't even hit the double digits over the weekends, so you can imagine my confusion. After trying to pin down some irregularities in geography, browser, and behavior, I'm still at a loss. I'm seeing a big spike in organic traffic (all not provided), as well as direct page visits, and I'm gaining traffic from US, Brazil, United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain, Malaysia, etc. etc--so not just one specific area. Is anyone else witnessing this in their data? Does anyone have any insight or ideas as to how I can look further into this? I am at a loss and any information would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Lauren McLaughlin
Search Behavior | | LMcLaughlin0 -
Higher rankings, low traffic
Hello There, My question is the following: How come my rankings are much higher than when I started with the optimization process (1 year ago) but my organic traffic is lower compared to the previous year (it didn't increase at all)? NB - I haven’t received any penalization and the keywords I am targeting are definitively searched and are the most important for my company. Thanks a lot 🙂
Search Behavior | | Midleton0 -
Why do all traffic curves show a "saw tooth" pattern in Google Analytics
Greetings Mozzers This sounds like a dumb question, but it's bothering me just the same and I would like to think what the fine community of SEO experts at MOZ thinks I have taken a look at the traffic curve for about 20 different sites in very different industries (home improvement, wedding party supplies, pet feeding systems) and it seems to me that they all show a saw tooth pattern, more or less like the one below.
Search Behavior | | Masoko-T0 -
My impression drop drastically in the past two days.
My impression drop drastically in the past two days. What could be the cause for it. My website is http://4pmdesign.com Thank you in advance.
Search Behavior | | 4pm0