My direct traffic went up and my organic traffic went down. Help!
-
So on Oct. 21, our direct traffic increased 3x and our organic traffic decreased 3x. And it has been that way ever since. Almost like they flip flopped. Additionally, that was the same day I started retargeting to our site. I have tagged all the links from the ads and they're being counted as google paid clicks in GA. And our accounts are linked. I am just dumbfounded as to how this could happen.
-
Hey Arnold Ambiel,
cheguei a esse tópico porque estava tendo um problema como o seu. O tráfego orgânico e direto foram revertidos. Vi que você tinha esse problema em 2016 e o meu ocorreu em junho.
Você encontrou alguma solução para esse problema? -
haven't checked yet but did find this article about serp sitelink changes on the exact day i saw traffic drop.
-
Awh, shucks! Thanks for the kind words!
I look forward to seeing what you find! Let me know if I can help any further!
Regards,
Trenton -
It's contributions like Trenton's above that make me love the Moz community. I will check all that you suggested and report back.
-
I'm going to chime in here as the conversation has already started from which I want to reference a few items.
While Sean is correct that there is a redirect on page load, - which is weird & not likely optimal - the redirect isn't causing the UTM parameters to be dropped here.
If you check the Network tab of the debug console of Chrome you'll see the two requests for the URI you listed above. If you click the requested file (in the network tab) & navigate to the 'Headers' tab you will see that Query String Parameters are still there & being passed.
Now let's circle back to the original problem & see if we can't get to the bottom of it!I checked out the graph you linked and while it does seem that there's an inverse correlation there, I wouldn't assume too quickly that they switched. I would encourage you to dive into the data a little bit more. Specifically:
-
I would use Google Search Console's Search Analytics (the actual interface, not the section in Google Analytics) & look to see if the number of clicks around that same time changed much.
-
If there is a noticeable change, dive into the keywords & Landing Pages that saw the shift
-
If there is not a noticeable change, we can cross an actual organic change off our list.
-
I would also look at the change over that period in GA's landing page report. Look to see if there are any pages that saw a gain/loss over the period in question.
-
If there is, add a secondary dimension of medium & see where the change lies
-
If not, mark it off
-
The final door I would check is the changes that were made for remarketing
-
What if any changes were made within Google Analytics? Specifically the admin portion, while I'd check all changes you may have made here, I'm specifically curious if you may have added the URL Query Parameters as exclusions?
-
Were any tags, tracking codes, etc added during this time & are the implementations correct?
If you dive into these and summarize your findings here, I'll be more than happy to help you further. Though, I have a hunch that the answer is behind one of these doors.
Good luck!
Trenton -
-
thought i'd add the GA graph that shows the switch
-
so would a JS redirect make the session count as direct traffic?
-
Hey,
It looks like there was a JS redirect in place that redirects users to a fresh page view of the same page - don't know if this might be something having an effect?
I used Ayima Redirect Tool for chrome to find this - see the screenshot attached.
Hope this helps,
Sean
-
Thanks Sean!
Here is the final URL:
http://www.oneworldplayproject.com/buy-bulk-soccer-balls/?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=bulk&utm_content=bulk10&utm_term=300Here is the URL in the ad that people could type in. This is a redirect to the www. version:
oneworldplayproject.comAlso, these are only image ads so there is no display URL being shown.
I am also curious why Organic would drop though. But let's play this out first.
-
Hi there,
Although you say you've tagged your ad traffic correctly, it sounds like your UTM tracking isn't set up correctly - 95% of the time wrong tracking from ads forces a sudden unnatural increase in Direct traffic. The other possibility is that you're sending traffic to a page that's then redirecting to your site which may trim off the UTM tagging and force the traffic as 'Direct'.
Give me an example of one of the URLs you've tagged up and I'll see if anything is going wrong.
All the best,
Sean
-
direct traffic can be from bookmarks and such, as well as it could depend on proper implementation of ads and retargetting too.
That does seem a bit odd of a coincidence though, I have never dealt with such a switch scenario like that and to that degree, I have only seen more negligible or at least less worrisome amount of such changes in the past which we ended up not spending time to find out what was the underlying sitch with it as it corrected itself as a trend after a short period of time.
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
-
Difficulty with Indexing Pages - Desperate for Help!
I have a website with product pages that use the same URL, but load different data based on what's passed to them with GET. I am using a Wordpress website, but all of the page information is retrieved from a database using PHP and displayed with PHP. Somehow these pages are not being indexed by Google. I have done the following: 1. Created a site map pointing to each page. 2. Defined URL parameters in Search Console for these type of pages. 3. Created a product schema using schema.org, and tested it without errors. I have requested re-indexing repeatedly and these pages and images on the pages are still not being indexed! Does anybody have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacleaves0 -
SEO Strategy help
Hi, I run a B2B 3rd party retail ecommerce site and I am kind of stuck on how to implement my SEO strategy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steve45058
So I learned from AdWords data that the best converting words to my site is the (Brand name, Model Number). Many of my B2B customers already know what they want/are looking for. Now this is all fine and dandy for adwords, but I don't really know how to implement this strategy on the SEO side. I do rank decent for some of these product keywords, but 99% of them I do not (which confuses me because some of the brands I rank high for are the more popular brands eg. more competition.) When I do keyword research on SEMRush or another site, it tells me that the competition for this type of keyword strategy is extremely high. Any Help, Advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!1 -
Blank Cart Pages Showing as Duplicate, HELP
Hi Everyone, I'm seeing a bunch of URLs that look something like this [ domain.com/cart?add&id_product=42&token=776d4a08721f3d8c920e287248797547] showing as duplicate content in my Moz crawls. I think these are just blank pages for the most part. Is there anything to be concerned with here? Is there a way to clean this up? Thanks! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Will Google recognize a canonical to a re-directed URL works?
A third party canonicalizes to our content, and we've recently needed to re-direct that content to a new URL. The third party is going to take some time updating their canonicals, and I am wondering if search engines will still recognize the canonical even though there is a re-direct in place?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Loss of traffic due to domain move, not recovering
I have a new client who this year chose to eliminate using a "stronger", older domain (domain authority 50) for a newer, weaker domain (domain authority 38). The redirects actually started end of 2013 and happened over time by page/section. All were completed by Jan 12 2014. While 301 redirects are in place, and the robots.txt is disallowing all (187 pages blocked), it looks as though Google is still indexing pages (149 indexed) although not sure why. Perhaps they should be removed from the server? In spite of the redirects, they are not getting the (combined) traffic expected. Should they have had that expectation? Could it be because they are going from a "stronger", long established domain to a "weaker", newer domain, that it may take a long time to recover? They recently had another agency review the links on the weaker domain and they submitted a file to Google to disavow the links they found to be "toxic" however it doesn't seem to have made any difference, yet. Any idea how long it "should" take to make a difference, if it will indeed make a difference? They do have a blog in a sub-directory that doesn't get much traffic (approx 0.50% of the total traffic). Every post ends with a blatant self-promotion and due to Penguin, they have recently begun to mix up their link text and not include a link on every post. Last their target audience is both B-B and B-C, with B-B being priority. The big question I have is do you see changes take place with almost instant results in Google? Or am I right in telling him, this will take some time. He feels it's been almost 4 months now and their visibility/traffic should be more in par with what it was combined. Something to note is that they were sort of competing with themselves by using both domains however the number of searchers probably hasn't changed much... Thank you so much for giving me your 2 cents!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cindyt-17038
xo0 -
Tagged URL ranking organically
I've noticed that one of our GA tagged urls are ranking organically & therefore is skewing the referral data. The campaign that we were tracking is no longer active but the link still works, but it's going to an old landing page. I asked our developers if we could redirect it but they said that it didn't work. Does anyone have some advise or a solution for this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Elihn0 -
GEO IP Redirects affecting Organic Rankings
Not sure if anyone has ever had this problem. We have a client who is a UK based retailer with a large retail presence in Canada and a U.S site as well. For the past year while keeping track of their rankings, they steadily ranked #1 for their brand term on Google.CA. At the end of June we implemented a GEO IP redirect for U.S visitors to be redirected to the U.S site if they clicked on the .CA listing. Over the next two weeks the ranking for the single branded keyword went from #1 to completely off the top 50. Could this have possibly happened due to the GEO IP redirect? The .CO.UK site has always been top 3 in the organic listing and is still #1 but in Google.ca the Canadian site has dropped off completely after consistently ranking #1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | demacmedia0 -
Can anyone help me clean up my link profile?
Hi, I've been struggling with my rankings for some 18 months or so. It seems like the plan is to review my back links and remove or disavow the ones that could be causing my site problems. Unfortunately I neither have the time or expertise to perform this task and wonder if there are any freelancers who could work on this project? I look forward to hearing from anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0