Google Update?
-
We have a website that for the past several weeks has been very consistent at between 13,500 and 14,200 daily visits and this site received 15,600 last Thursday.
THIS week, Monday is at 22,200, Tuesday is at 26,200, and at mid-day today (at about our traffic halfway point in the day) we're already at 14,000 today.
This was a site that was bringing about 14,000 visits as of May 16th last year and dropped to 11,000 the following week. The traffic to this site this week is so far beyond statistical analysis that there must have been something that happened.
-
Is it possible that this direct traffic is coming from email? I've seen big direct traffic spikes when a link has "gone viral" over email. The other thing I would check for is multiple Google analytics tags on the home page (double counting your traffic), but you would probably see a crazy low bounce rate if that were the case.
-
Possible tracking issues are not checking out. 3rd party advertisers are showing higher impressions and clicks.
Traffic by specific service providers... Comcast, Roadrunner, Cox, etc.. are all consistently higher at the pace of traffic growth. Traffic from all of these sources have a graph that looks identical; Showing the same increase at the same time.
Further, the non-U.S. traffic is down by percentage so the spike is coming from domestic traffic originating in the United States.
Average time on site for the last 30 days is: 1:20... minute twenty seconds. Month of January was 1:24. The past two days is 1:02. With traffic being up 70% if they were all brief hits - then the past two days' visitor duration should be cut in half.
The home page traffic which is where the spike in visitors are landing on the site has a visitor duration of about 22 seconds lower than usual, which is 55 seconds.
The visitor duration difference looks more like the traffic isn't targeted, although not 100% uninterested either.
We have done a lot of work on this site since losing some traffic to Panda last summer. I just wouldn't expect such a dramatic increase without an update in Google but regardless the increase is in "direct" visits and not from search.
-
Has time spent on page changed at all? If the bounce rate is higher I would figure it would have dropped. Also is it just visits that are up? Did pageviews stay roughly the same?
When something like this happens I try to look for any indicator that analytics is having tracking issues.
For example if a user came to the site, then went to a page that is somehow killing my cookie information or ending my session somehow then that would cause the visits to spike while pageviews stayed the same. This would also drive my bounce rate up.
This happens often if you have a third party tool like a booking engine or chat tool that uses a different URL, and you aren't using the linker functionality where you need to.
Another suggestion would be to do a comparison to recent history of location and service provider dimensions to see if any specific location or service provider is spiking compared to recent slower times.
If all of that looks legit it may just be that other marketing efforts are paying off, and people are coming back to your site...
-
Yeah, revenue is up. We have several ad programs running and affiliate systems that are outside of our tracking software - so it seems that 3rd parties are seeing it too.
Now, revenue isn't up in a straight line with the traffic increase because we are not as aggressive on our home page with ads and affiliates. Bounce rate is higher on that page than before but time spent on page isn't? Bounce rate went from 48% to 79% which scares me. Seems the traffic coming in is less targeted now than our typical sources.
-
Interesting stuff - is revenue up as well then? Could there be an issue with analytics code counting people twice, or not counting people in the past?
-
Carson thanks for your response.
Here's how strange it is. There's an overall boost in traffic on most of the pages but they are trickling out from the home page. The home page traffic is up tremendously. Our direct visits: Not driven by Google, Yahoo or any other significant referrer - the spike seems to be from direct visits. No spike in keywords, nothing. Last Tuesday/Wednesday's home page PV= 1,435. This Tuesday/Wednesday's home page PV = 22,594.
I was wondering if there was an algorithm change with Google maybe temporarily from a URL where the SSL system they are using is giving referring the visitor as a no-follow. Google I ask, because I don't know of another traffic source that could produce these numbers. I wish that I knew so I could duplicate it!!
Affiliate impressions and revenue are up in reflection of the traffic change, the average time spent on the home page is almost identical to historic #s (55 seconds).
Not to toot my horn but we are good at this stuff and we can't figure it out. There's no referrer for this new traffic - it is all registering as direct - and still seems to be increasing.
No significant blog, forum or social media mentions either. The thought was that maybe the site was mentioned on TV or something but even that would have spiked inside a 2-3 hour window and then go back down. Not keep gaining.
The site is samplewords.com and typically gets about 365k visits per month and 825k PV. I would love to hear someone's theory on this.
Maybe it's something simple I'm missing while I look for something more technical?
-
We are not aware of any significant changes since last Thursday, but I'm glad to hear that your results are doing well! It might be interesting to go into analytics and see where the users are coming from. Are they coming through Google-organic, or did you perhaps pick up some coverage that is sending you referring traffic?
If it is organic traffic, you can then look at organic keywords, compare it to the past, and see which keywords have increased the most. It's always good to know what's going right and how you can duplicate it It's also worth looking at your content report to see which organic landing pages are doing well.
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
-
New Google SERPs page title lengths, 60 characters?
It seems that the new Google SERPs have a shorter page title character length? From what I can gather they are 60 characters in length. Does this mean we all need to now optimise our page titles to 60 characters? Has anyone else noticed this and made any changes to page title lengths?
Algorithm Updates | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
Pages fluctuating +/- 70 positions in Google SERPs?
I've got some pages that appear somewhere around #25 in Google. Every now and then, it just goes away from the top 100 results for a few days (even up to a week) and then it comes back. I've got other pages that rank around #8 which falls down to about #75 for a while and then it comes back. But while a page may be gone from the top 100 results in the US, it still ranks at about the same place everywhere else in the world (+/- 10 positions). I've seen this happen in the past but never it happened so often. What gives?!?
Algorithm Updates | | sbrault740 -
15% Drop in Traffic. Anyone have theories about the most recent update?
Analyzing our traffic, looks like we were hit site wide, with some article pages that don't have great engagement seeing more damage than others. We've been talking to other sites, and sites that have never seen any penalties and do everything right have also seen about 15-20% drop in traffic. The sites we know that weren't affected are brands (sites you would recognize by name). The only conclusion I can draw from everything (looking at mozcast metrics 'big 10' is that branded websites saw a boost. Does anyone else have any theories about what this most recent update was about?
Algorithm Updates | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google Search CTR % By Position
Hello I am looking for an updated report regarding the CTR % by position for Google search results. I have the compete.com report which Gives the 1st organic position a 53% CTR but I have not be able to duplicate that number with any other report or research. I am just trying to validate this report before I suggest any recommendations to my company regarding our search efforts. Thank you Ben
Algorithm Updates | | bhalverson30 -
7 Pack Google Serps?
What is the best way to get into the 7 pack of google serps? I have a site that ranked well before this changed but not was pushed back to page 2. I have Unique content and I currently have provided my info to all the standard local sites, like Yelp, Manta, Local.com and others. I already have a Google Local page and I also have links from local sites. What else can be done?
Algorithm Updates | | bronxpad0 -
You folks see the Google Analytics Real Time View (Beta)
I was pretty impressed by the amount of data they can present to you and how quickly the site gets it to you. Hit your GA account click the Home tab then click the Real Time (Beta) link in the navigation. It is pretty impressive. GoogleAnalytics.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | donford0 -
Decrease in Organic Traffic Due to Google Places
Hello there, we are national junk removal company and have franchises in most major cities in the US. We wanted to check to see if anyone else has seen a drop in organic traffic with the changes that Google has done with the amalgamation of Google Places with the organic rankings. All our places pages are ranking quite well and we are ranking higher organically but it appears that people go to the Google Places page and then either leaving or picking up the phone and calling our 1800 number to book a job instead of going to our website to make the booking. The interesting thing is that although Google started these changes back in October 2010 we have seen the drop in organic traffic mostly starting in April, even though we have seen a steady increase in organic ranking across the board. Has any other franchise based company seen this happen as well? Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | imspecialistgotjunk0 -
Is this a possible Google penalty scenario?
In January we were banned from Google due to duplicate websites because of a server configuration error by our previous webmaster. Around 100 of our previously inactive domain names were defaulted to the directory of our company website during a server migration, thus showing the exact same site 100 times... obviously Google was not game and banned us. At the end of February we were allowed back into the SERPS after fixing the issue and have since steadily regained long-tail keyword phrase rankings, but in Google are still missing our main keyword phrase. This keyword phrase brings in the bulk of our best traffic, so obviously it's an issue. We've been unable to get above position 21 for this keyword, but in Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex (Russian SE) we're positions 3, 3, and 7 respectively. It seems to me there has to be a penalty in effect, as this keyword gets between 10 and 100 times as much traffic in Google than any of the ones we're ranked for, what do you think? EDIT: I should mention in the 4-5 years prior to the banning we had been ranked between 15 and 4th in Google, 80% of the time on the first page.
Algorithm Updates | | ACann0