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.
Should Google Trends Match Organic Traffic to My Site?
-
When looking at Google Trends and my Organic Traffic (using GA) as percentages of their total yearly values I have a correlation of .47. This correlation doesn't seem right when you consider that Google Trends (which is showing relative search traffic data) should match up pretty strongly to your Organic Traffic.
Any thoughts on what might be going on? Why isn't Google Trends correlating with Organic Traffic? Shouldn't they be pulling from the same data set?
Thanks,
Jacob
-
Google's trends are for all searches happening for that keyword.
Unless you're the only website relevant for that keywords, odds are you're not going to even remotely match up to what Google says is " trending ".
Even for your brand name, when you search you don't just get your website, you get your facebook, youtube, BBB an anything else, even if others have a company named something likeminded.
So your website isn't the only thing to get that traffic, you'd get the majority of the traffic, so it's possible that the trends match somewhat but highly doubtful you'd match up even in the 90% range.
Another way to look at it is, Google is giving you a idea of how many people searched for a keyword, problem is, everyone doesn't use the same keywords to get the same results. This is even true with brand names, if you have a two word brand name, people might search with it all as one word, or mispells it, even butchers the name but still gets to the results. In that case you didn't see there trend data unless you looked it up, so thats some extra numbers your way.
It's more of a guide for you to gauge how popular a keyword is and high likely it is that people will be searching for that keyword. It's not really meant to be used as concrete data for organic traffic comparisons. That's what benchmarks and historical data is good for.
Hope my long winded explanation helped some.
-
I don't really understand what you're saying. Maybe I should have mentioned that the main term I'm looking up in Google Trends is our brand name and that we show up #1, and #3 for that term. We have for more than a year. So if Google Trends see's that, that specific keyword is increasing in search volume over the year, shouldn't we see similar trends with traffic coming from that keyword?
-
OMG! No!
If you would have earned #1 position from the beginning of Google, that would have been your best opportunity to have organic traffic that matched what you see in Google Trends. HOWEVER, Google has become, a better webmaster, more concerned about meeting shareholder expectations, and has begun modifying the format of the search results pages to keep you on their search pages for more page views, display more ads, display more ads at the top of the SERPs, increase shopping results income, make more money. So, if the #1 organic position, would have remained at the tippy-top of the SERPs for all of those years, then your traffic graph might be similar to Google trends. Instead, the reality is that your traffic graph would have shown either a much steeper decline or much less dramatic growth.
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
-
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 -
Organic Traffic From...Mountain View, CA?
I've noticed something a little odd in my organic search traffic lately. Looking at several websites that target the Minneapolis area, I'm seeing some organic searches come in (typically using head keywords - no geo-modifier) from Mountain View, CA. There's no way we are truly ranking well on these terms in California, so it certainly feels like Google sniffing around. I was worried that perhaps they were checking into penalizing us or something, but we've actually seen upticks in search traffic lately. This traffic is not showing up in Google Analytics, just Adobe SiteCatalyst. In the past, spikes from random locations were probably some sort of crawler, like the preview bot, but these are coming in as searches with (for now) keyword data. Has anyone else seen anything like this?
Reporting & Analytics | | SarahLK0 -
How do I manually add transactions to Google Analytics
We are seeing Google Analytic's drop transaction on our site so therefore all the figures are skewed. Is there a way I can manually add transactions to GA to cover the missing one?
Reporting & Analytics | | Towelsrus0 -
Weird info from google analytics?
Hi Could anyone explain what these visits are in Google Analytics? Under traffic sources and organic I am seeing lots of entries with data like below. Any ideas what kind of traffic this is? Is it a bot and if so what is their purpose of it and is it recommended that you block it? Pages/Visit 1.00 Avg. Time on Site 00:00:00 % New Visits : 100% Bounce Rate: 100.00% Many Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ocelot0 -
Should you get a new Google Analytics account if your site has a new domain after a site redesign/new development?
We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change. Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheOceanAgency0 -
Exclude Traffic from India
i would like to exclude all traffic coming from India using Advanced Segment in Google Analytics. How do i go about it ? Will it be applied to future traffic also ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0 -
Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?
I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting . I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie1