Google traffic plummeted on Sunday - what can I do?
-
On Sunday, my google traffic plummeted. I was getting 320 hits a day from Google on my best days - my site is just about to turn 3 months old so I was thrilled with that. On Sunday it was 110 and I think it is getting worse. Edit: Yep, yesterday was 65.
Google Webmasters shows the drop today. One day, my impressions were 5,500 and the next just 1,000. Yikes. My traffic is so depressing now after so much hard work.
Is this Google Panda? What can I do? I have no idea why this happened. I am getting several quality backlinks a week, sometimes a day.
-
Yes I am doing my best to add value. Tips, reviews, info - and only the best deals on the best products that moms love. I know moms like my site based on the response. Plus - the big deal sites (DA: 68-73) are using my deals and giving me backlinks. I write from a first person point of view and I don't do paid posts or anything like that. My site is better than some ranking on the first page right now - sites that don't update frequently on some category pages, that have very little content, go off-topic just to make money, but high DA because they are older sites.
How can I nofollow my affiliate links? I have about 600 posts. I can't go back and do it one by one.
-
Affiliate sites are often prime targets for Panda. IMO the only way to succeed with an affiliate site is if you are adding plenty of value along with the affiliate products. Sites that use the stock product descriptions and add little else will not do well. For your products make sure that people are able to get much more value out of reading the information on your site than they can on other sites who sell the same products.
Also, make sure that your affiliate links are nofollowed. But, this is not likely the cause for your traffic drop.
-
A honeymoon boost does make sense. I am getting some awesome backlinks but my Domain Authority is 17 and I have been on the first page with sites that are 40+. However, I attributed that to the backlinks.
I am still on the first page for my main keyword. Not getting much traffic but at least I have that.
I have no copied content whatsoever. But I do have a lot of affiliate links that are not cloaked as my blog is deal/coupon related with an audience of moms.
-
This can be really common for a new domain. Often Google will give a new site a boost in the SERPS to see how it does and how users interact with it. Then, after a few weeks or months it can decrease to its rightful place. My guess is that this is what has happened. However, it can only be a guess without having a deeper look.
Panda is a potential issue as well although we don't really know how this "10 day rollout" works. It seems to me that most sites that were affected by Panda this time were affected on July 18 but I suppose the 20th is possible as well. If you have a lot of content that is copied from other sites then I would think Panda is a high possibility. Otherwise I'm guessing it is just that you had a honeymoon boost.
-
Well what's the domain? I'd be happy to take a look
-
Thanks. I have been trying to build proper, awesome content and links and google was loving me. I just don't get why all of a sudden everything plummeted.
-
Build proper, awesome content and links. That's what you can do and the best thing we can suggest without any further info.
Also don't rely on GWT for any sort of actual data. (Or GA for that matter COUGH 'not provided' COUGH)
-
Hi,
Could you share the URL? It does seem like your site might have been affected by Panda. Panda was rolled out on Thursday, but might not have affected you until Sunday since this Panda update is being rolled out over a 10 day period. What kind of content have you focused on?
-
You said your site was only 3 months old--it could be a reverse sandbox effect. Also, the last algo update was on July 12 (possibly) and it could of moved it around.
-
Can you share your site url so we can take a look.
Tracy
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
-
Dark Traffic Mystery!
Hey everyone, My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions. My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop. I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway. This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!! 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer0 -
How do I exclude fake direct load traffic from networks in Google Analytics?
Starting on Friday 1/20, we noticed a huge, unnatural spike in Direct Load traffic. While researching where it was coming from, the big flags were huge spikes in countries that normally only have <5 sessions a month like Russia, Singapore, Brazil, etc., each sending 1400 a week, with >99% bounce rate and <0:00:05 average session duration. While looking into networks, we saw an influx in Networks that had never sent traffic before, each with >1300 sessions a week, 100% bounce rate, and 0:00:00 session duration. The list of these Networks are: astute hosting usa incorporated
Reporting & Analytics | | ServiceMichael
nephoscale inc.
network transit holdings llc
serverbeach
coreix ltd
2ezhost llp
nforce entertainment b.v.
mir telematiki ltd
servers australia pty ltd wholesale services provider for abuse
reliablehosting
dimenoc servicos de informatica ltda
c0715718213 I have seen a lot of guides of filtering out Referral traffic, but these are all coming in as Direct Load and are skewing our Direct Load results. Any idea how to filter or remove this traffic from Google Analytics?0 -
Why only a few pages of my website are being indexed by google
Our website www.navisyachts.com has in its sitemap over 3000 pages of information, and this is all unique content written by our team. Now Google Webmaster central shows only 100 urls indexed from 3500 submitted. Can you help me understand why and how I can fix this issue? The website has 4 years old, is a Joomla 3.3 up to date. It has part of the content in the Joomla core content systems and part in K2. Thank you. Pablo
Reporting & Analytics | | FWC_SEO0 -
Tracking Google places (7 pack listing) traffic in google analytics
Is there a way to see Google Places traffic (traffic from users clicking through the 7 pack listings) segmented in Google analytics ? Normally is it just lumped together with the organic traffic ? Can you see the search phrases used to find your site, or do they also show up under 'not provided' when from Google Places. Im aware i can see some limited data in the Google Places analytics, but these seem to be 2 days behind when ever i view them.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sam-P0 -
How to filter out client traffic
Hi, I would like to filter out traffic in GA that comes to my client site just to login into their application. Is there a way to create a filter or segment that if a visitor exits the site to a subdomain it will filter them out? For example, they land on the homepage (abc.com/), click the login tab (drop down screen) and login and go to their application dashboard (app.abc.com/). I would like to delete this traffic segment as it is creates high bounce rates and makes it difficult to test landing pages. Thanks so much, Donna 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | WebMarketingHUB0 -
How can I tell if I am using Universal Analytics?
On my Google Analytics page it says at the top "Upgrade to Universal Analytics Upgrade to get a deeper understanding of your users through new tools and more accurate data." Below that it talks about how to do it. I do not see what they are talking about for "Select an account and a property, then click Universal Analytics Upgrade." But if I can into my change history is shows Changed By-System Property "http://www123.com" started transfer to Universal Analytics processing." This was on May 22nd and it hasn't said anything since. Why does it keep telling me to do it if it already has? It doesn't say transfer complete anywhere so I don't know if it finished or not.
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Why is my traffic dropping so hard?
Hi guys, My traffic has been dropping pretty hard from just over 3k to around 250 in the last few days. I've ran a few tests using Google webmaster tools and Open Site Explorer, as well as answering a pretty cool quiz that was created by an SEO to determine if I'm the victim of any Google updates etc, and everything is looking okay... What do you think could be causing this issue? We're only just gearing up to start on a SEO campaign. At the moment no SEO is being done other than just casual blogging. CcZoXP7.png
Reporting & Analytics | | featherseo0 -
Drop in google referral traffic
Hi guys, As we know, GA shows google as traffic source in two ways: google / organic for organic searches and google.TLD / referral for everything else: google groups, base.google.com, static pages, google reader, google image search, google search appliance/mini. What we noticed is that around Oct 20th there's a huge drop of google.TLD / referral traffic to our site. Do you experience something similar? I couldn't find anything Google-related that happened around this specific date. We use GSA for our site search and I'm wondering if this could be the reason - maybe someone from our development team made changes to GSA settings that affected this traffic source. Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | lgrozeva0