Search Spike over the weekend
-
I own a website, and recently had a HUGE spike in organic search traffic from Google over the weekend.
It seems to be going back down.
Anyone have any idea why? Anyone have any similar experiences?
-
It was Google organic traffic as a whole that spiked. 4 or 5 keywords brought in the extra traffic, and these are keywords I usually rank in position 8 or 9 for.
-
Going into the weekend search queries and traffic across the board with my clients has been crazy. Now Witt the post penguin update, things are even wackier! See if for some reason maybe some internal subpages of newer content has made some increase in rankings and be sure to analyze the entry points and referring sites and or keywords. Your webmaster tools will play a major role in this riddle.
-
I'd drill down to look at the keywords and see if it's a particular keyword that spiked or if it was Google traffic as a whole that spiked. You can then look and see if there was a news event or something like that.
I have a similar head-scratcher that I didn't catch in time. I saw a spike in queries from Yahoo for [uss iowa], but not from Bing, and my site isn't in the first four pages for that term. My guess is that Yahoo featured something on their home page that included a search for that term (the USS Iowa left the SF area this weekend and did make the news). This was just a one-day thing and then it disappeared again.
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
-
Subdirectory site / 301 Redirects / Google Search Console
Hi There, I'm a web developer working on an existing WordPress site (Site #1) that has 900 blog posts accessible from this URL structure: www.site-1.com/title-of-the-post We've built a new website for their content (Site #2) and programmatically moved all blog posts to the second website. Here is the URL structure: www.site-1.com/site-2/title-of-the-post Site #1 will remain as a normal company site without a blog, and Site #2 will act as an online content membership platform. The original 900 posts have great link juice that we, of course, would like to maintain. We've already set up 301 redirects that take care of this process. (ie. the original post gets redirected to the same URL slug with '/site-2/' added. My questions: Do you have a recommendation about how to best handle this second website in Google Search Console? Do we submit this second website as an additional property in GSC? (which shares the same top-level-domain as the original) Currently, the sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console has all 900 blog posts with the old URLs. Is there any benefit / drawback to submitting another sitemap.xml from the new website which has all the same blog posts at the new URL. Your guidance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute0 -
Not appearing when www.domainname.com.au is searched
We are working on an SEO campaign that has an issue, of which we are unsure of the cause. When the domain is searched for in Google as domainname.com.au. The search results show the website just fine. See here for the display of this. http://imgur.com/a/Vcbqs However, when the domain is searched for in Google as www.domainname.com.au. The search results do not display our website. See here to see this issue. http://imgur.com/a/jX692 We are unsure why our website does not appear in Google's listings when the www. is added in search. If anyone can help us here to explain and help us resolve this, that would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
URL structure with broad search phrase but specific intent
My question is regarding some difficult URL structure questions in an online real estate marketplace. Our problem is that our customers search behavior is very broad, but their intent very narrow. For IRL examples go to objektia (dot) se. Example: Lease commercial space Stockholm Is a usual search query, wherein the user searches for the **broad category **commercial space, in the geography of Stockholm. The problem is that their intent is actually much more specific, since: Commercial space === [Office, Retail, Industrial, Storage, Properties] I have previously asked the forum for help regarding the placement of products in our URL-hierarchy, in which I got some good answers. We chose to go the route of alternative #3, ie placing our products (real estate listings), directly beneath their respective category (neighborhoods). https://moz.com/community/q/placement-of-products-in-url-structure-for-best-category-page-rankings Basically we chose to have the following URL structure: Structure: domain.se/category/subcategory/product Example: domain.se/Stockholm/suburb-of-stockholm/specific-listing-12 Now the question is, how do we deal with the **space type **modifier in our URL structure. Nobody wants to see retail space when they are after office space, so our current search page solution (category page) is the following: Structure: domain.se/space-type/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood All space types: domain.se/commercial-space/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood Specific space type: domain.se/office-space/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood Now, the problem with our current solution in combination with our intent to move our product pages into this hierarchy, is that every product page will be (and is today) linking towards the specific type category. Our internal link network would be built around type categories that are extremely relevant from a UX standpoint, but almost worthless (surprisingly) from an organic traffic standpoint. Also, every search page (category page) for each space type would be competing for the same search broad search phrase. The alternative is to place the type modifier at the end of the URL: Category page type at the end: domain.se/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood/type Listing page (product page), type at the end: domain.se/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood/street-address/type/listing-12
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Viktorsodd0 -
Im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, because I rank 7-12 in search results
Hi All, Pls check the below url http://www.powerwale.com/inverter-battery for inverter battery keyword in google.co.in im scoring 100% in the page optimization, wht else I need to do, and also I still rank in between 7 to 12 in search results.. How can be in Top 3 search results.. Pls suggest.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1191 -
Something unintelligible in google search results.
In the last month i see something that i can't explain, from nowhere the first search result for the keyword Name Necklace is an Etsy shop, (I attach an image). I try to find out why google gives this online shop the first position and i have no idea why is that. Please, any suggestions? mnbAIrY.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm0 -
Sitemap Folders on Search Results
Hello! We are managing SEO campaign of a video website. We have an issue about sitemap folders. I have sitemaps like ** /xml/sitemap-name.xml .** But Google is indexing my /xml/ folder and also sitemaps and they appear in search results. If i will add Disallow: /xml/ to my robots.txt and remove /xml/ folder from webmaster tools, Google could see my sitemaps? or it ignores them? Will my site effect negatively after remove /xml/ folder completely from search results? What should i do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roipublic0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
Is there an search marketing / keyword tool in existence that can solve my need?
I'm looking for a tool that can do the following:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PTC4SEO
Organize a keyword universe and its data/metrics:
-track keyword data over time (search volumes/trends, relative competition metrics, rankings,
etc)
-Sort keywords into buckets/silos/ad groups
-allow you to assign individual keywords to multiple silos/groups and show the relationships between groups based on keyword relationships.
-incorporate a site map
-tie keyword targets to static pages, informational content (SEO) & landing pages (PPC)
-help with KW and/or competitive research (optional)
-tie into web analytics / marketing on-demand software (optional) I know that this is a lot of functionality, but for enterprise search marketing, this could be a game changer for my strategy (if it exists currently) or for the industry (if it doesn't exist). Please share you solution suggestions here...0