Why would my Bounce Rate drop from 40% to 2% over 3 days without making any major changes to my site www.hiltonhead.com?
-
Our Wordpress site has had an historical bounce rate of 40% for the last 3 years but last Thursday it dropped to 17%, Friday to 7% and now is running at 2%. The pageviews per visit have also increased from 3 to almost 6.
Thanks
-
Serge and Keri,
thanks for your response, after getting your replies i checked and indeed there was an additional google_analytics_auto.js file that was installed. Turns out that Hostgator's cpanel has a google analytics integration program that was activated on the 9th (when everything started getting weird) and it modified my .htaccess file to load the additional .js file ... hopefully that was the problem ,will keep you updated.
Thank you!
-
I'm looking at the source, and I see /google_analytics_auto.js as well as Yoast's wordpress script. You might want to ask about that and see if someone just installed one of those and if that's causing the problem.
-
I'm thinking the same way Serge is. I've seen that happen when you get two analytics scripts firing at once, especially if one is a plugin and one is custom-coded.
-
have you installed any new js scripts? analytics + commerce?
any new plugins?
any suspicious traffic?
-
umm that's a loaded question. I'd start by segmenting your traffic - that is search, direct and referral - compare the different timeframes. If there is a dramatic difference work out why? If nothing starts out just compare everything in your analytics account, could be a new ranking, referral. Also you could have lost a ranking or a link so actually your bounce rate has gone down because your overall traffic has gone down.
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
-
Deceptive site warning from Google: Java script and meta descriptions deployed.
Hi all, We received a deceptive site warning from Google recently. Seems like there is a deceptive content on some pages of the website. Some pages are removed from Google index. Meta descriptions have been deployed on the site few days ago. There is also java script on the website which we use for tracking visitors like GA. I wonder what's the reason for this alert? We believe its due to the Java script. Do you think meta descriptions will harm this bad? Any ideas? Thanks
Search Behavior | | vtmoz0 -
Google Analytics: advanced segment for hour of day
Cioa from 17 Degrees C cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂 In Google analytics I want to report specifically on Blackberry Mobile traffic next to hour if the day. Whilst this customised report I ripped off did the job @ http://bit.ly/hourdays I only resorted to this after battling with advanced segments thinking I could do the same thing. So my question is please how can I get this report http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/hrs-day-examplecopy_zps4f15d4a1.jpg by building it via advanced segments and not ripping off via http://bit.ly/hourdays Grazie tanto,
Search Behavior | | Nightwing
David0 -
Why is my client ranking no.3 for a competitive keyword?
Hey guys, I'm doing a bit of detective work and I'm trying to understand why my client is ranking no.3 for the keyword "office desks" on google.ie. https://www.google.ie/search?q=office+desks&aq=f&oq=office+desks&aqs=chrome.0.59j60l2j62l3.10127j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 The strange thing about this is that 'office desks' is not in the 1. title tag 2. url 3. h1 tag 4. anchor text of the internal links 5. anchor text of the external links 'Office furniture' however is the optimised keyword here however this appearing no. 35 in SERPs for the same url. Any ideas what this might be? Regards Rob
Search Behavior | | daracreative0 -
Massive Google Drop on two sites!
Hi All, We have experienced a massive Google drop on Two of our eCommerce websites in the past week. From Feb - July we were ranked 2 for various key words In Aug we dropped to 8 In September to 96 if not lower. We pay for monthly link building and add unique product info each week (but not much new content such as articles or blogs). My SEO guys has not been that helpful and just sent me a link to the Panda update blog, which doesn't mean a great deal to me. Obviously this has had a massive effect on business, and ideally i need to diagnose the problem and find a new startegy on moving forward, so most likely looking for a for a new SEO guy/company as well. I need someone is proactive, communicates well and make constant suggestions about moving forward not just link building. One thing I would like to add is these two site have a different homepage, category and range structure, but do share some if the 2000 product database. Can anyone help? Any advice on sorting this would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks M
Search Behavior | | etsgroup0 -
2 gallerys showing the same images on the one website
Hi, I was Just looking through some of our website and noticed that we have a slide show gallery and when you click on the image it loads onto a light box gallery. would this act a duplicate content as it shows in two different types of displays in the one place. Thanks again
Search Behavior | | Feily0 -
Hi guys.. post-penguin my website coming in and out of serps every other day... what reason for that? ie. #11 --> #300+
We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th.. wee then set to work on Link profile... since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+ this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern... but the question is What is Google doing here and Why? any suggestions?
Search Behavior | | Geminineil1 -
Anyone else hit by Panda 3.3?
http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078 or indeed any other other 40 changes Google have announced? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html Unfortunately I have in a bad way. Almost exactly a year after it first happened with Panda! I'm Angry!
Search Behavior | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Is there a site intelligence product that offers data on subdirectories of a competitor site?
Services like Compete and Quantcast provide information on competitive sites, but as far as I can tell only at the aggregated domain level. Is there a similar service (paid or free) that provides this type of data - especially demographics - for a subdirectory? For example, if my competitor has widely different product categories and I suspect that the audience for Product B is very different from his site as a whole (which is mostly focused around his major product, Product A) is there any way to get info on that without actually owning the site and having access to Analytics/Facebook OpenGraph etc.?
Search Behavior | | jliu.blitz0