Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

Why would on-site search queries show up as referral traffic?

Reporting & Analytics

380

SEMnMs last edited by

The site analytics have been set up for over a year and suddenly last month there was a huge spike in referral traffic (1100+ sessions). Upon further investigation, the majority of it was coming directly from internally, either as mysite.com or search.mysite.com and the landing pages from the referrals are all /search.html?query=*

This was never an issue before so I'm trying to understand what could have changed. I'm following up with the client to find out if their dev team may have changed anything related to their search engine but I'm wondering if there may be another explanation.

A few notes: previously mysite.com / search.mysite.com were not in the Referral Exclusion list. I've added them now but this was never an issue before.

Thanks in advance!
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0

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

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

Referral exclusion not working with GTM?

Hi, how are you?
I have my website with Google Tag Manager implemented. Google Analytics is one of the tags I have configured. The problem is that Referral exclusions aren't working for me. I excluded 3 domains, and I keep seeing them in my Referral Traffic report.
Any idea why this could be happening? Best wishes,
Ariel g04tIqv IrzKXiY
Reporting & Analytics | | arielbortz

0
Loss of referral traffic after change of CMS, host

I have a client that changed from MoveableType to Wordpress. He also changed from a dedicated server to WP Engine. He may have blocked search engines for a week or two, so his organic traffic is down but only by 25%. He's 301 redirecting all of the old pages. The mystery is that his referral traffic from Google is down 90%. It's a popular blog, so that's thousands. It's been going on a month now. Anyone seen this before?
Reporting & Analytics | | Hyper-Dog

0
Massive decrease in search volumes from Keyword planner

The search volumes that I'm getting out of Keyword planner are approximately 10% (some as low as 1%) of the search volumes for the same keywords back in April. Is there something I missed in this time? I'm using the same account, same language and location settings. Anyone have an explanation for this? To be honest these new search volumes sound a lot more plausible to me - I'm just intrigued by what might have happened!
Reporting & Analytics | | a-champ

0
Webmaster Tools shows 0 visits, Analytics shows 1000s?

Webmaster Tools reported a "Big traffic change for top URL" for one of our sites about three and a half weeks ago. WT traffic is 0 since that date. However, our analytics data shows no significant decline in traffic. The WT alert was received on Nov. 16. There was a significant dip in GA visits Nov. 22 but it recovered and I'm seeing no other indication that this is a penalty. What could be going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | IMM

0
Huge Traffic Drop?

I am seeing a huge 30-40% traffic drop which started around 8-9 PM EST last night. I am compare the stats of today with last Saturday and the drop is significant. I am checking it in Google Analytics and Clicky and both report the same. The Adsense impressions drop also show the same. The rankings of my top keywords seem to be fine. I re-checked them using ranktracker for Google US, UK and others. I don't understand what has happened here. Anyone else seeing the drop? Is there a Google Panda update underway?
Reporting & Analytics | | abhim12

0
Number of Visitor Entries to page via search engine

Hi, I wanted to figure out the most optimal way to track the number of visitors that comes to a specific page on my blog via search engine only. I know Google Analytics has a "top landing page" filter, but that includes all visitors that comes in directly or other channels. Is there a way to figure out how many visitors a certain page received that was generated through only search engine? Does SEOmoz have this capability?
Reporting & Analytics | | kevinyu1029

0
Why did I loose all my product page rankings (e-commerce site)

This friday I noticed that I'd lost pretty much all my product pages in the SERP and also their rankings for the product names. These are products I both have introduced to the market (sweden) and also some that I've been the only one selling. I've analyzed a couple of different ranking-faults. Examples: **"super mario väggdekaler" should rank **http://www.roligaprylar.se/Super-Mario-Vaeggdekaler.html as #1 and has done for several years. Instead this search in my internal search engine ranks #10-#15 with no relevance. www.roligaprylar.se/?q=mario%20v%E4g "jedi morgonrock" should rank www.roligaprylar.se/Jedi-Morgonrock.html as #1 or #2 but instead this url ranks as #12 www.roligaprylar.se/product_detail.php?pid=Jedi-Morgonrock "Charlie sheen bobblehead" (in the swedish serp this should be the most simple term to rank on. previously #1) my internal search engine ranks for #8 with this url <cite>www.roligaprylar.se/?q=Charlie%20Sheen%20Bobblehead</cite>J So I've drawn these conclusions and actions Products that don't rank well longer but still ranks with their alternative non-rewritten url has gotten deep links from affilliates (i track affilliate ids and stuff via this link) and have replaced the original url which is rewritten. Action: Canonical urls for these non-rewritten products to the rewritten version. For example on this product page www.roligaprylar.se/product_detail.php?pid=Jedi-Morgonrock I've placed a canonical for this url www.roligaprylar.se/Jedi-morgonrock.html With the products not ranking at all or when searches in my search engine shows up I suspect some kind of dup content punishment where Google thinks the search result is more important than the product page. Action: All search-pages are now noindex,follow I also increased product name density in terms of keywords on the product page. But I'm still owned and losing tons of money during the holidays (buying adwords at obscene amounts instead hehe). So just wanted to hear with you guys. Are my conclusions and actions correct? What have I missed, what more could I do to reverse this? Thanks Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | nuttinalle

0
Search for signed in users

"As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, particularly for signed in users" What does this imply ? Does it mean that search is more customized for signed in users than those for non signed in users ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_2005

2