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Category: Search Behavior

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  • katelynroberts


    rankings visibility score organic traffic google search engine results google search

    Hi there,
    Our site has experienced a huge organic traffic drop, specifically from Google. The drop occurred on Feb 19 and I've got no clue why it happened. We have not made any significant changes to the website and it doesn't look like there was an algorithm update last week. We don't have any Google penalties or indexing issues noted, and the drop isn't specific to any particular segment/region/keyword. What am I missing? Any advice or insight is super duper appreciated. Our site is a Wordpress/WooCommerice e-commerce site with a blog and long-standing #1 ranks for keywords related to our main product offering. Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.12.25 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.07.52 PM.png

    | katelynroberts
    0
  • LPantell


    keywords search

    Certain searches seem intuitively like they would be popular, but don't appear so in my keyword research on Moz Pro. For example, I am a therapist and would have guessed that a lot of people would be searching for "online therapy California" during this pandemic, but actually those terms are not popular. I looked at Google Trends to see if I could understand this better, but It wasn't very helpful. Any other suggestions for where to get more information when search terms you would expect to be high volume don't appear to be so?

    | LPantell
    0
  • JKTAffiliate

    This question is deleted!

    | JKTAffiliate
    0
  • mhenshall


    seo

    Hi there, I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on this... I'm working with a client whose website is experiencing some odd organic traffic patterns. See screenshot attached. As you can see, there was a sudden cliff fall about a month ago, and then it recovered (almost) entirely. Then, a month to the day later, the same thing happened again. What is the likelihood that this is a data glitch vs an algorithm thing? Any light you can shed on this would be appreciated. Thanks,
    Marc
    Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 09.37.26.png image url)

    | mhenshall
    0
  • JCN-SBWD

    This question is deleted!

    | JCN-SBWD
    0
  • LeiaTank

    This question is deleted!

    | LeiaTank
    0
  • TTR1


    My Google Analytics always shows visitors on my site that do not show up with a location.  They are always shown as being referred from "ads.google.com".  Our service is exclusively domestic in the U.S., yet my user location map will show 1 domestic visitor, but 19 total visitors.  PLease see attached linked image.   Is there some sort of malware that is being exploited on my pages somewhere that these people are accessing?  Is there some way of blocking them from my site?  Should I?  Aren't they skewing my Google Analytics results?  Are they potentially dangerous?  Thanks in advance for all replies. mKEjs2H.jpg

    | TTR1
    0
  • McTaggart


    Hi, I'm just about to put up a new site and I need to decide between having no trailing slash at the end of the all the URLs, or putting one in there. I think Matt Cutts has a slight preference for them, as stated here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more "Matt says he would slightly advocate for using a trailing slash simply because it clearly indicates that a URL is a folder and not a document." However, I'm really wondering. I mean, if people link to my site, they'll tend not to insert a trailing slash, I'm thinking... Your thoughts would be welcome on this one! Cheers, Luke

    | McTaggart
    0
  • AMA-DataSet


    Hi, Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! I have been reading up on this topic but there is some contradictory articles out there and I was hoping someone could clarify the latest practise for me. Website A links out to four of its partner websites.
    These links are using a target="_blank". When i look at the acquisition data for any of the partner websites there is zero referral data from site A. 
    I tested this wasn't an analytics bug by using the real time feature while clicking the partner links to see what had happened, and to also find the source, but I found that they are all being returned as a source direct. Ideally id like it to show the referrals once more for reporting purposes. Do I need to add extra google analytics parameters/functions to track the outbound links? or should this referral data be appearing correctly and it is something unrelated to the links themselves? or should I throw in the towel and drop the target blanks? Thank you in advance for your time.
    Best Regards.

    | AMA-DataSet
    0
  • Tiedemann_Anselm


    Hi guys, I run a wholesale program, frequently my e-commerce competes with my own wholesalers on many websites like Etsy for example. Usually, the wholesaler displays the exact same picture of my website. May Google find that I have duplicate content? Is there any alternative solution for this instead of asking the wholesaler to make their own pictures? Thanks

    | Tiedemann_Anselm
    1
  • RoxBrock


    I loved the presentation Phil Sharp did about A/B testing using User Testing. I would love to use his company UserTesting.com, but their minimum package is for $7500! I'm a small business and certainly cannot afford that. Is there another option for the small business owner?

    | RoxBrock
    1
  • grantcole91


    Hey everyone! Apologise if this has been answered somewhere else, if so let me know. I work as an in-house SEO for a private healthcare company. Recently it's been a struggle to bring in consistent traffic and it's getting tougher to replicate traffic figures for the month before, let alone improve. Rankings are consistent if not improving in some areas and I've done work to maintain or improve CTR from page title and meta etc. I've been considering a few factors and making sure I'm performing the best I can be but, using both Keyword Planner and Search Console, I've noticed that search volume and impressions for our branded terms and industry specific terms like "nursing agencies" have dropped. My question is: Does this represent an industry trend and it's a case of trying to gain as much traffic from a diminishing pool? If so, this might make sense. It's worth me noting that we are a national company and recently there has been a amount of negative PR around our entire industry.

    | grantcole91
    0
  • seosogood


    Hi there! I've been checking rankings in UK and Ireland for the last months and I found something really interesting... "Belfast + keyword" - UK = 2º position / Ireland = 1º position "keyword + Belfast" - UK = 14º position / Ireland = 1º position *(same keyword) I don't understand how it is possible... Website is not geo-targeted so Google has no preference for any of these countries... Any ideas about why does it happen?

    | seosogood
    1
  • richdan


    I need a tool that will run through a long list of URLs (from multiple domains), look for a specific string in the source code and then produce a CSV showing in which URLs the the string was found. This is for legitimate research, not for any nefarious purposes Any ideas of such a tool already exists?

    | richdan
    0
  • Instabill


    Hi folks, My company has Google Analytics setup for all of our websites, but I am a bit stumped on something. Now, this may not be possible, but am I able to see what time of day visitors most frequently view my blog? I would like to optimize blog post publishing for when I know we have in influx of visitors, yet I cannot find this information on GA. Any input would be much appreciated. Regards,
    Meghan

    | Instabill
    0
  • LMcLaughlin


    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

    | LMcLaughlin
    0
  • blitzna10


    Im just curious.. Im sure a lot of you, like me, Google your own search terms on a fairly frequent basis. Does doing this skew the result you are actually seeing? As in, does Google tailor the results more to my liking, and therefore perhaps show my own site (which I would click through to often enough) higher on the page that it actually is? Sometimes I swear that happens. Steve.

    | blitzna10
    0
  • prestigeluxuryrentals.com


    I basically changed the title and meta description of my homepage and when i search on google, it still shows old. Whats the issue?

    | prestigeluxuryrentals.com
    0
  • Adam_SEO_Learning


    How does/can Google read the plus and ampersand symbols? For instance if I optimise a webpage for 'black & white football' and another page for 'black + white football' would there be any difference in ranking position? Does Google take notice of such symbols or will it only pick up on the keywords 'black white football'?

    | Adam_SEO_Learning
    0
  • iBecC


    Hey Mozites! I was wondering if anyone has come across any good resources for industry benchmarks relating to google analytics? (Social stats would be great as well, but Google Analytics is my main concern) Specifically, I have a client that is a bank and I would love to be able to compare their stats (traffic, unique visitors, bounce rate, time on site, conversion rates...) to other regional banks. Any ideas? Thanks for reading and for your help!

    | iBecC
    0
  • ACann


    I'm banging my head on this one.  In the past I was able to use Compete.com, Quancast, Google Trends, and Alexa, but now all these sites either required you to have Pro membership (pay) or they discontinue it like Google Trends for website. I need to do this comparison for one of my client... their traffic versus 4 of their competitors. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Have a blessed Day, Benny

    | ACann
    1
  • SeoSheikh


    Hi, I have a brochure style website mycompanyname.com that gives lots of detail about my company and what services we offer etc. I am soon going to be adding an commerce solution (haven't decided on opencart or paid such as shopify yet). I was wondering... is the best way to have a shop to have it on a completely separate domain like mycompanynameonlinestore.com or simply add it to a sub folder on my main brochure style website like mycompanyname.com/onlinestore Many thanks to anyone who takes the time to help me make up my mind!!!

    | SeoSheikh
    0
  • smstv


    Hello all! I get these awesome emails from google about a specific site. But I am not sure how, and why. But I like the data it generates. I am uploading a screen shot. They are called Analytics' Snapshot. My question is basically: How to setup google analytics snapshot to report on a specific website in my account? Because I have several I track - Over 40 domains, but I am mostly concered with like 4 -5 of them, I would like to report on. Thanks Mozers!! GJF3iQX

    | smstv
    0
  • MBASydney


    Hey i was wondering if anyone is aware of any tools at identifying demographic data for keyword terms. Like age, gender, etc? Cheers, AZ

    | MBASydney
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    Has anyone ever had success with doing SEO for a title company? The owner of our law firm has one, and I'd be happy to work on it, but it just doesn't seem to be cost-effective. From my experience, title business goes to people who personally know the realtor; no one who actually has a say is "googling title companies." But, if I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it and any experiences you want to share. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • Nicktaylor1


    I have around 50k pages indexed on my site but when I do a google site: of my site it shows around 100k pages indexed. Why is it showing so much more? It is also only showing around 700 pages indexed in my web masters account for the site. Background: We have a custom site map being generated automatically. Let me know if you would like more info, Thanks.

    | Nicktaylor1
    0
  • SDLOnlineChannel


    Hi there, I tried to search the Q&A but couldn't find any answers to my issue. We have a page that is ranking #2 for the term "translation memory" in google.com, but it doesn't show in Google.co.uk. This has been like this for weeks now. We are not targeting any specific country in GWT. Does anyone know a possible explanation for this? Thank you.

    | SDLOnlineChannel
    0
  • BecCan


    So this might be kinda of a weird question... Every morning and night I check the ranking of a website that I am building.. The ranking has gone up a lot the last two months. It went from the fifth page to now the second page. I have a issue where some days I check Google my website is completely gone! I go through every page for my keyword and it's not there! After a couple of days of frustration I check again and all of a sudden it is there but now at a higher ranking... I went through the code to make sure there's a not a not follow code in the robots.txt page... Btw another weird thing is so then I look up my website on a google out of country like google.sg and I'm ranking first page like number 5 but again disappeared off google usa. Literally driving my crazy.. does anyone know why this could be? Btw the first time it disappeared I went into webmasters and sent a request because I thought I got penalized but they responded they could not find any spam and I was NOT penalized...

    | BecCan
    0
  • DirectAsia.com


    Hi, We have a mobile website using a sub-directory domain.com/m/whatever-page/. Our mobile is completely separate site from desktop version. What's the best way to handle the redirection from mobile visitors and those that are searching from mobile and see desktop version in the search result? Appreciate anyone's expert advise. Thanks,
    Willy

    | DirectAsia.com
    0
  • uesat


    For my blog, should I block category, "read more" and author links from being crawled by search engine robots?  Is it good for SEO? Thanks

    | uesat
    0
  • SAMarketing


    Given that the Panda algorithm includes engagement and user experience, when would you consider deleting a page that has poor engagement and conversion metrics? For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page? Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)? Are some metrics weighed more than others? What kind of thresholds do you use? Finally, is there a situation when you would choose NOT to delete pages, even considering the above?

    | SAMarketing
    0
  • nutjobshell


    Hi there, I have a site www.nut-job.com and I am currently getting more traffic from the USA than uk.  Is there anyway of not getting listed in the USA and telling google that the site is a UK site?

    | nutjobshell
    0
  • funktiongolf


    my website www.funktiongolf.co.uk had been ranking well until January and i'm nearly sure its due to low quality links and poor back-link profile i.e over-optimized money keywords can someone guide me? thanks for anyone that replies. I really do appreciate the
     help.

    | funktiongolf
    0
  • simon_realbuzz


    Hi Mozzers, Just wondering if someone could point me in the direction of some useful industry benchmarks stats. I'm currently looking at a healthy active living website but trying to find out some average benchmark stats (things like av bounce rate, av time on site, pages per visit etc) for this sector so I can compare this with the site analytics. Having had a look around I can't find a great deal out there relating to average benchmark stats for this sector. Your help greatly appreciated. Thanks Simon

    | simon_realbuzz
    0
  • markseouk


    Hi, I would like to hear how people work their billing for SEO work. I have previously been charging month in arrears to my clients but now have had a couple of companies run into financial difficulties and not be able to pay there bills. I would like to know how many of you choose to charge clients up front for work or send them a bill after a month etc. Thanks

    | markseouk
    0
  • sknott


    I find this hard to believe but it looks to me as though Safari has jumped ahead as our top browser in the month of January. At first glance I would think it was combining mobile safari with desktop safari numbers but then on the 5th spot I see Safari(in-app) which after looking into could be multiple things from safari mobile, bookmarked pages, or Chrome for ios. Just looking for thoughts on this, are others seeing a large uptick in Safari traffic for desktops?

    | sknott
    0
  • SCLTeamShip


    Hi, Our business has a few brick-and-mortar business locations, but it is servicing multiple big cities in the US, where we do not have a location, but we do business in though our independent agents (and we cannot use their locations).
    I have inherited the website, which has duplicate content for all the locations (cities and states), and I am worried about possible penalties. Every major city and state in the US has been targeted so far, but it seems pretty spammy to me- duplicate content, pages for all major US cities, pages for all states, etc. This is a B2C services website, and we can service anyone in the US. Example of pages: domain.com/services/service-from-x-city 
    and domain.com/services/service-from-x-state The goal is to rank locally for all the cities we are targeting. What on-page optimization should I work on besides unique content for each one? Should I consolidate some pages, and if yes, what do you recommend?
    What overall strategies should I follow so I do not lose the traffic for the targeted cities? 
    Off-page, I am working on building local citations for these cities. Thank you.

    | SCLTeamShip
    0
  • SEOBodybuilder


    Recently a domain I manage shot up in rankings for many industry related keywords in Yahoo! It only lasted for two days, but durring that time we saw about 300% increase in organic traffic. Durring that time we were spending a lot of money in paid ads. Can anyone explain the sudden surge in Yahoo! organic traffic and rankings? Could there have been traffic from our paid ads that tracked to organic search? We use Google analytics and an in-house tracking system that both showed the same trends.

    | SEOBodybuilder
    0
  • ExperienceOz


    Hey all, We've seen quite a large recent increase in traffic on our site (we sell travel experiences such as tours, tickets to theme parks etc.) but not much in the way of increased conversions as a result, so we are looking into further ways to optimise conversions. I'd like to know what thoughts people have on making product descriptions either bullet points or paragraphs, or some combination of both. We currently have paragraphs of information not just to explain the product but for on-page SEO purposes as well which seems to work well for drawing people to the site, and we have information further down the page on inclusions/exclusions etc. but it is well "below the fold". Do you think it's worth moving at least the "highlights" of the product up to the top of the page so that customers can instantly see what's on offer "at a glance"? Any answers or research people can direct me to would be greatly appreciated, cheers.

    | ExperienceOz
    0
  • gfreeman23


    I have a wordpress site with about 3,000 posts and over 1,000 tags. All of the tag archives are currently indexed in Google and I don't want them to be. I just set the meta robots to no-index all the tag archives and was wondering how long it will take til they're out of the search engines? Since there are close to 1,500 of these and they are duplicate content it would be nice to have them gone asap. I noticed Webmaster Tools allows me to resubmit my site to index if my site has changed significantly... should I try that?? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!

    | gfreeman23
    0
  • gfreeman23


    I have a Wordpress site with about 3,000 pages and 1,000 of those are no value/duplicate content and drive no traffic. They are blog posts each with a single image and permalinks like example.com/post1, example.com/post2 etc. I've started by deleting pages and 301 redirecting to relevant pages that actually have content. Is deleting and 301 redirecting the best route? Is 1,000 to many 301 redirects? Should I just delete the pages that aren't really relevant to anything else? Anything else I should know about deleting all of these pages? Any help would be great!

    | gfreeman23
    0
  • nwright


    Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?

    | nwright
    0
  • daygoexpress


    I joined as member to this site yesterday and have found a few isuues, long page descriptions X 7 ( all now fixed ) and 3 X duplicate title tags. The title tags duplicated are www.daygo-express.co.uk www.daygo-express.co.uk/ and www.daygo-express.co.uk/sitemap/ how do i fix these issues, i am by no means a webmaster and only use simple 1&1 package as a host. Do i need to insert robots txt?, if so can someone with knowledge writeit for me and post please. Also does the robots txt need to placed in the heder section. many thanks Dee

    | daygoexpress
    0
  • Dexx22


    Hi, I have a voip service, currently my keywords are ranking good in US. But i would like to rank them for India too. As i am selling India based voip services. I have a single domain .COM and no country specific domain. Here what i am planning to do. I would change the setting in Google webmasters central to change the target country to USA. And then i will do on page seo to match keywords related to India. Is there anyother suggestions? please let me know.

    | Dexx22
    0
  • preventionaid


    Is there a way to track the history of keyword search over time. I.E. the frequency of the Google search of the phrase 'unpasteurized milk' from 2006-2012 to see trending patterns.

    | preventionaid
    0
  • TomCritchlow


    I have a hypothesis that the % of users that type URLs is decreasing. Instead I think users will be arriving at sites by clicking on links in emails, search and social. Where can I find data / research to back me up?

    | TomCritchlow
    0
  • DTOSI


    SEO Moz has reported 7 of my keywords declined dramatically overnight. One word even went down 18 positions in Google. I have a few ideas on why, but none of them really make sence. 1.) The night before the decline I deleted around 6 "test pages" from our website. None of them could be reached through our website but they could be found by typing in the url. Most of these pages only said things like "test", but one of them was a draft of a keyword rich page within my website that only included some of the keywords that went down in ranking. Could the fact that I deleted this page be the cause of the ranking decline? 2.) About two weeks ago I purchased a url volusion-store-design.com which is one of my keywords and forward the address to an internal page within my website http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design. Could have this hurt my rankings, like Google is considering it duplicate content or something? If anyone has some ideas please help. Here are the keywords that I lost ranking for: volusion developers ---- down 18 volusion features ----- down 5 volusion store design ----- down 2 volusion templates ------ down 11 volusion designers ------ down 4 free volusion templates ------ down 4 ecommerce volusion features ------ down 3 Here are the pages these keyword were pointing to: http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Features http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Templates

    | DTOSI
    0
  • neooptic


    Hi there. I've got a client that runs a photography studio and is seeing a massive drop in traffic. I was wondering if it could be seasonal - it's her first year trading so she has nothing to compare it against - or whether it could be some other issue. Thanks!

    | neooptic
    0
  • Theo-NL


    After having answered quite a lot of questions here, I figured it was about time to ask one of my own. Can anybody point me to decent (experimental) research articles or blogs that actually show variations in meta descriptions influence the Click Through Rate (CTR) of searchers? On dozens of websites on the internet it is stated that 'meta descriptions affect CTR', but (good scientific) sources for those statements are nowhere to be found. The only research I can find that comes closest to providing any evidence is a translated study by dynamical.biz, which states that searchers LOOK a lot at the meta description, but this study (atleast in the translation) mentions nothing of searchers actually CLICKING it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    | Theo-NL
    0
  • SallyO


    I'm wondering about one of our web-projects. There's a lot of good interesting content but the  statistics of page impressions don't make me very happy. Each user is visiting just 1,5 sites per visit. That's really not much. We have other (similar) projects where this problem does not exist, where user are visiting a lot more sites per visit. I have no idea what could be the reason for it. Do you know / use some tricks to get more page impressions? Thank you, Sally

    | SallyO
    0

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