Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Finding an Explanation for a Massive Spike in Organic Search Traffic
-
Hi,
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason. The organic search engine traffic had always been steady, but about two months ago, organic search traffic started rising slowly.
I checked OSE & a few other tools, but couldn't find any massive source of gained links or other explanations - just the usual occasional blog post about the company. I got in touch with my friend to see if maybe they'd gone with a competitor or something else, but he also had no idea (and even if he wasn't being honest with me, we still should've been able to spot links or social metrics or something!)
Then, yesterday, their organic search traffic just tripled. The crazy thing is, it's not from one keyword: Every search term, and (not provided) essentially went up 200-400%. And I have no freaking idea why. No large gain of links. No website editing. The only possible explanation I thought up is maybe one of their competitors got knocked out, but I doubt that would cause such a stratospheric rise.
So figured I'd turn to y'all. Any ideas on what might be causing such wonderful results? Anyone have any good tips on figuring out why a website could all of a sudden be doing incredibly? Analytics chart is below for the curious, and thanks in advance for any ideas / tips!
-
Your traffic seems to have increased around the time of the big Panda update around the 21st August. Looks like (in contrast with your competitors) you were doing something right.
You might like to keep an eye on this chart: http://www.rankranger.com/rank-risk-index which I find gives a nice overview of the serp fluctuations.
-
Maybe in GA, just under where you got that chart from, click "Source" and then plot out the different search engines to validate where that extra traffic is coming from. My assumption if you are seeing all the keywords rise and not sudden traffic from one or a few new keywords is that maybe you just started ranking in one engine across the board? Like maybe all the steady traffic you were seeing before was all from Bing but suddenly Google started blessing the site? I know that doesn't answer your question but at least will eliminate some of the possibilities.
Also, the sources you mention for looking for new backlinks take a while to update (like OSE). So new links wouldn't be showing up in there yet. You might want to look in your traffic sources > referrers report in GA to see if there are some new links in there that you didn't know about before. Or if the total number of unique referrers has increase comparing two time frames? Might be a needle in a haystack but just one more place to look.
Good luck!
-
It's hard to say exactly what the cause is without knowing what the site/keywords are, but I'd recommend checking if these are all New Visits and/or Unique Visitors and where they are geographically located. I've seen huge spikes in traffic by the same group of people/computers in foreign countries before who were hitting my site over and over for some unknown reason. Also, check which search engine is sending the traffic, which landing pages they visited first, etc.
And of course, this spike could be legit, especially if your site ranks for keywords related to a particular topic that happened to get a lot of searches yesterday (breaking news, a controversial report debunking commonly held belief, viral video, etc).
-
I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason.
Try digging a little deeper into the analytics.
If you are looking at his analytics you should be able to see where those visitors were coming from on that day... also pages that they entered and lots more. The answers are just a few clicks away.
-
From those analytics, it almost looks like he started his website in Jan 2013... if that is the case, it can take some time to establish authority and ranking. If your rankings increased, then it makes sense that your traffic would also increase.
For a site that I optimized, we saw some immediate results; however, after 3 months of building up authority, rankings shot up and so did traffic.
It is tough to say exactly what is causing that... looks like you must have done something good : )
Mike
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
-
Does Search Console data include GMB traffic? Branded CTR is 37.8%- Good or Bad?
Hey all, Per Search Console our branded keyword CTR is 37.8%. But when that keyword is searched our GMB listing shows up on top of the #1 result. For the same 90 day period GMB shows another 35% visits to our GMB (based on the number of impressions and visits to our GMB page) listing when the same keyword is searched. My question is this. Does Search console data include clicks that came from our GMB listing or not? My thinking is like this: If GMB traffic is not calculated in search console then it means that 72.8% of people looking for our brand will end up on our site on way or another 9organic #1 result plus GMB listing visits) We are also doing PPC for this very keyword that has gets almost 20% of the remaining traffic. So after adding all up we are loosing about 8% of our branded traffic to people who are doing adwords. When you search our brand you normally see 2, 3 competitor's adwords ads. Does anyone know how this works exactly? And if you don't mind sharing your branded keyword CTR's, so I can compare to ours please. I would love to compare to a site that actually has a GMB listing ranking for the same keyword Thanks in advance, Davit
Reporting & Analytics | | Davit19850 -
Moz reports way fewer backlinks than google search?
My site is only 11 months old but has steadily (if not slowly) been gaining backlinks. My question, is why Moz shows me at 303 backlinks and Google search console is showing at 1,237? I am more than a little suspicious that this could highlight the reason Moz shows such an unfavorable DA ranking for our site at a DA12. Other competitors that rank for similar keywords to mine are DA 42, DA 65, DA 73, etc. If the largest ranking factor is links, and they have mine reported incorrectly - is this the issue with DA as it relates to sites like mine? Any answer from someone who has experienced similar, or has a definitive answer is more than welcome to chime in! Thanks, Kevin
Reporting & Analytics | | kvncrll0 -
Change Phone Number Based on Traffic Source + Ping URL for Call Tracking Number
Hi Everyone, Is there a tool that can change the phone number on a web page based on the visitor source (i.e., direct, organic, paid, etc.)? I'd like to implement a solution like this with different call tracking numbers based on the visitor source. We use the Google suite for our analytics (GA, GTM, Google Data Studio, Google Optimize is also an option as well). - Also, is there a good call tracking service that will ping a URL each time the phone number is called so that we can track these calls as events in GA? The majority of our visitors use a desktop PC and dial in the number on the screen rather than clicking (tapping) on it from a mobile device. Thanks, Andy
Reporting & Analytics | | AndyRCWRCM0 -
How to track google auto search suggestion click?
Hello Guys, In google.co.uk when I search SEL and google gives me option of different different sites and when I click on any one site then that click tracking I need. I have attached the screenshot to understand easily. Is it possible to track such things or possible via server logs etc? TV99h
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1231 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
How to safely exclude search result pages from Google's index?
Hello everyone,
Reporting & Analytics | | llamb
I'm wondering what's the best way to prevent/block search result pages from being indexed by Google. The way search works on my site is that search form generates URLs like:
/index.php?blah-blah-search-results-blah I wanted to block everything of that sort, but how do I do it without blocking /index.php ? Thanks in advance and have a great day everyone!0 -
Google Analytics Organic Search Keywords Suddenly Displaying FulL Urls
In my Google Analytics, the top keywords for Organic Search are suddenyl displaying full URLs. For example, now the third and fourth keywords are http://www.domain.com/highly-specific-URL. These have all started recently around the same day, July 12th. I've checked back, and we've made no internal changes to the site around that time that could affect this. Any thoughts on this? Thanks! P.S. It might be related to rich snippets, but I cannot tell at this point.
Reporting & Analytics | | 10SL0