An overnight substantial drop in visit duration while amount of sessions grew.
-
Hi,
My Ave. session duration has dropped from 2:10 to 0:14 overnight. At the same time, amount of sessions from all channels grew on average of 56%. This increased (and I guess low quality) traffic is coming in from multiple regions, languages, devices and channels. I was not able to pin point it to 1 source, location, landing page etc. See enclosed screen shot.
I would appreciate if anyone can shed some light on what's wrong and if there are any SEO implications.
Thanks.
-
Ami,
From everything you're telling and showing me, the only thing that seems to make sense is an increase in nuisance bots or a problem with your tracking codes. Would you like to give me access to your Google Analytics so I can take a look? (My email is on my profile.) Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can see things differently. You're probably cross-eyed from having looked at this for so long.
You can revoke access again after I've had a look.
-
Hi,
Thanks for introducing Screaming Frog. very usefull!
It seems the GA is properly installed. I've checked most of our pages through this Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-debugger/jnkmfdileelhofjcijamephohjechhna
I spent a long time searching a possible change taking place right around the time this drop append and also tried to pinpoint the drop to a specific audience, region, system type etc. But no luck. It seems the increase in amount of sessions and the drop in session duration is consistent throughout all regions, devices, acquisition channels etc.
Check out the enclosed screen shot. it literally append over night.
Looking on exit pages, I don't see a pattern. There's an increase on the amount of exists (sines we have more overall sessions) but the exists are distribute across all pages.
I would appreciate your help...!
-
Hi Ami,
The articles I referenced should explain which ones to filter. It's really a process of elimination. You filter IN the ones you know will send legitimate traffic to your site - your own domain, Google translate and the WayBack Machine.
What changes have you made to the site recently? Something triggered these changes I would think.
I'd check to see if you have Google Analytics properly installed on every page of the site. Is it installed more than once? This post by Seer Interactive will help you determine whether that might be the problem.
Then I'd look to see where people are exiting the site. Is there a pattern?
If none of that sheds any light, I'd be happy to take a look.
-
Hi,
Thanks for the answer.
while I do have a few weird domains (including 4webmasters.org) in the list you pointed me to, I also have my main website, my subdomians, youtube and many others.
How do I know which ones to filter?
Also, the Ave. session duration from these "visitors" is over a minute. I don't think they explain the drop from 2:10 to 0:14.
The amount of visitors from these is not substantial and does not explain the jump in visitors (that started with the drop in session duration).
Thoughts?
Thanks.
-
The first thing that comes to mind is "nuisance bots". Have you checked for that?
If not, go to Google Analytics, Audience > Technology > Network and then Hostname (as shown in the attached image). Any hostnames that don't contain your own domain name, Google Translate or an archived version of a page on your site are likely nuisance bots and should be blocked from reporting.
Here's a Moz post that explains more about nuisance bots and how to block them as well as a webmasters stack exchange Q&Athat explains how to block them.
Nuisance bots impact your SEO reporting. They do not impact your visitor experience, rankings or conversions.
If that doesn't answer your question, let us know and we (meaning the larger Moz group) can try again.
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
-
AMP Session Stitching - How to deal with Google's Client ID AMP Policy
Hello, I recently attended SMX East and the concept of 'session stitching' for AMP was brought up (https://www.stonetemple.com/amp-tech-guide/). I reached out to my development team and they told me they could do it, but that we would need to agree to the new TOS changes and making users aware of then... https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7486055 Has anyone here done something like this? And if so how did you deal with the Google's Client ID AMP policy? Thank you all! -Margarita
Reporting & Analytics | | MargaritaS1 -
Sudden drop in traffic since website redesign – can't spot double firing sessions pre-update
Hi all, We launched an updated website around mid-April and have seen a long-term drop in unique page views and sessions since then. Between 25-35%. Page views returned to normal within a month, however. In terms of acquisition, we've not lost referrals or direct traffic, just organic sessions. I haven't seen any significant Google updates except for 'Fred' but that was in March (pre-website update). We did have to do some 301s and fix up an HTML and XML sitemap, etc, post launch – but that's been in place for a while now so shouldn't still have such an effect? We are also struggling with load speed at the moment, working on this at the moment. Didn't think this had a such a significant impact on ranking however. We've lost mostly non-UK traffic, especially USA. We're actually climbing rankings for a lot of new keywords I'm targeting, so I can't see how our SEO has been hampered. Frustratingly, I wasn't using Search Console or Moz Pro before this update, so can't compare much in the way of keyword traffic (I know I feel very silly now). I don't know if it's a reporting issue (I wish it was). I mean we had both GTM and GA tags on the website (I didn't know this until I looked into it) but these were present post website-launch. And I haven't found enough double firing sessions or page views to suggest we used to be getting double figures anyway. Before this, we were ranking brilliantly and getting more organic traffic than ever. All the best,
Reporting & Analytics | | landport0 -
Penguin 4.0 update: drop in results end of September
Has anyone noticed certain drops in keyword rankings on/around 29 September? Has this to do with the Penguin 4.0 update? I read that this hasn't come "bug-free". Will this be adjusted the upcoming weeks? Or is this drop content-based based on the new algorithms and the content needs to be adjusted/updated?
Reporting & Analytics | | Mikrocentrum0 -
Referrals - How is it possible I have 5 new users and 100 sessions over a 2 week period?
I have a referral from an email (2), android search(1) and another website(2) but my sessions is 100 over a two week period? I have NO returning visitors (still session data though?) Seems unlikely that just these 5 users have generated 100 sessions!! Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | darrenbooy0 -
Average Session duration has dropped on May 12th and not recovered
Hello, On May 12th my average session duration within Google Analytics went from 1.12 seconds to 10 seconds. Every month since then it has had an average session duration of around 10 seconds. My traffic over this time has increased. I am concerned that the website is being attacked by bots. What should I be looking out for to work out what is happening? Many thanks for your help.
Reporting & Analytics | | mblsolutions0 -
Search Traffic Drops Before It Improves?
I'm working on a site with tons of great, useful content....the owners of the site implemented a new site layout and design (complete overhaul) and they were lacking basics such as meta descriptions, 301 redirects, and, shockingly, they had the same Title tag for every single page on a site with thousands of unique how-to articles. Unsurprisingly their traffic dropped by about 300%. They generate most of their traffic from people learning how to build stairs, how to install crown molding, and other related matters. Beginning last Thursday I've been performing basic on-site SEO, things like having unique titles for each page and similar tasks. The week from Thursday when I began until yesterday (Wednesday), Google traffic dropped -29.73% - 17,715 vs 25,210 I believe this is a normal part of the "Google Shuffle" -- does anyone have a Matt Cutts link or similar proof that this is a normal part of the process?
Reporting & Analytics | | wattssw0 -
Impression Drops Starting from June 2
In Webmaster Tools and the Linked Data in GA, we got huge bumps for some of our keywords this last week and subsequently were dropped from the face of the earth for other words were were tracking but not SEOing for. Basically for anything higher than 3rd page SERP, 30+ we were removed from Google search and we're no longer showing rankings for any of these words. Is this a new change as part of Penguin? I wonder b/c a lot of those words that were in the 60-100 in SERP were, as I mentioned, not focus SEO words but the backlinks were probably specific keywords, as we only have say 6 links and 4 are the same anchor text, this would put those words in the 60% over optimization penalty.
Reporting & Analytics | | Dweber0 -
Sessions in GA - need clarifications
Hello, Regarding recent change in how Google now defines a session... If a user visits a site from a different traffic source (say Google and Bing ) within 30 minutes, would that show 2 visits now ? Was earlier it considered 1 visit ? Also, sessions ends "at the end of the day" It can be different for different users ? How does Google defines end of the day ? for USA time ? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050