My direct traffic went up and my organic traffic went down. Help!
-
So on Oct. 21, our direct traffic increased 3x and our organic traffic decreased 3x. And it has been that way ever since. Almost like they flip flopped. Additionally, that was the same day I started retargeting to our site. I have tagged all the links from the ads and they're being counted as google paid clicks in GA. And our accounts are linked. I am just dumbfounded as to how this could happen.
-
Hey Arnold Ambiel,
cheguei a esse tópico porque estava tendo um problema como o seu. O tráfego orgânico e direto foram revertidos. Vi que você tinha esse problema em 2016 e o meu ocorreu em junho.
Você encontrou alguma solução para esse problema? -
haven't checked yet but did find this article about serp sitelink changes on the exact day i saw traffic drop.
-
Awh, shucks! Thanks for the kind words!
I look forward to seeing what you find! Let me know if I can help any further!
Regards,
Trenton -
It's contributions like Trenton's above that make me love the Moz community. I will check all that you suggested and report back.
-
I'm going to chime in here as the conversation has already started from which I want to reference a few items.
While Sean is correct that there is a redirect on page load, - which is weird & not likely optimal - the redirect isn't causing the UTM parameters to be dropped here.
If you check the Network tab of the debug console of Chrome you'll see the two requests for the URI you listed above. If you click the requested file (in the network tab) & navigate to the 'Headers' tab you will see that Query String Parameters are still there & being passed.
Now let's circle back to the original problem & see if we can't get to the bottom of it!I checked out the graph you linked and while it does seem that there's an inverse correlation there, I wouldn't assume too quickly that they switched. I would encourage you to dive into the data a little bit more. Specifically:
-
I would use Google Search Console's Search Analytics (the actual interface, not the section in Google Analytics) & look to see if the number of clicks around that same time changed much.
-
If there is a noticeable change, dive into the keywords & Landing Pages that saw the shift
-
If there is not a noticeable change, we can cross an actual organic change off our list.
-
I would also look at the change over that period in GA's landing page report. Look to see if there are any pages that saw a gain/loss over the period in question.
-
If there is, add a secondary dimension of medium & see where the change lies
-
If not, mark it off
-
The final door I would check is the changes that were made for remarketing
-
What if any changes were made within Google Analytics? Specifically the admin portion, while I'd check all changes you may have made here, I'm specifically curious if you may have added the URL Query Parameters as exclusions?
-
Were any tags, tracking codes, etc added during this time & are the implementations correct?
If you dive into these and summarize your findings here, I'll be more than happy to help you further. Though, I have a hunch that the answer is behind one of these doors.
Good luck!
Trenton -
-
thought i'd add the GA graph that shows the switch
-
so would a JS redirect make the session count as direct traffic?
-
Hey,
It looks like there was a JS redirect in place that redirects users to a fresh page view of the same page - don't know if this might be something having an effect?
I used Ayima Redirect Tool for chrome to find this - see the screenshot attached.
Hope this helps,
Sean
-
Thanks Sean!
Here is the final URL:
http://www.oneworldplayproject.com/buy-bulk-soccer-balls/?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=bulk&utm_content=bulk10&utm_term=300Here is the URL in the ad that people could type in. This is a redirect to the www. version:
oneworldplayproject.comAlso, these are only image ads so there is no display URL being shown.
I am also curious why Organic would drop though. But let's play this out first.
-
Hi there,
Although you say you've tagged your ad traffic correctly, it sounds like your UTM tracking isn't set up correctly - 95% of the time wrong tracking from ads forces a sudden unnatural increase in Direct traffic. The other possibility is that you're sending traffic to a page that's then redirecting to your site which may trim off the UTM tagging and force the traffic as 'Direct'.
Give me an example of one of the URLs you've tagged up and I'll see if anything is going wrong.
All the best,
Sean
-
direct traffic can be from bookmarks and such, as well as it could depend on proper implementation of ads and retargetting too.
That does seem a bit odd of a coincidence though, I have never dealt with such a switch scenario like that and to that degree, I have only seen more negligible or at least less worrisome amount of such changes in the past which we ended up not spending time to find out what was the underlying sitch with it as it corrected itself as a trend after a short period of time.
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
-
Organic real estate shrinking year on year against adwords?
Hi Guys, Has anyone seen proof or studies which show that organic real estate is shrinking year on year, resulting in fewer clicks to organic results and more to paid search? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marieh0 -
Technical SEO Issues - Traffic Drop
Hi guys, I hope you're all doing well! We're a small personalised gifts company who specialise in the provision of phone cases, mugs, macbook covers and the like. I head up the Digital Marketing but have little experience in the technical side of SEO and have very limited resources in terms of budget and staffing. Over the past few months, I've been working on stripping down the thin content on the site, fixing duplicate content issues and focusing on other digital channels to boost revenue. However, as of recent we've noticed a significant drop in traffic and our rankings. I've tried to diagnose the problem and I'm convinced there are some technical SEO fixes that need to be implemented. Our website is www.mrnutcase.com If any of you have any ideas, I'd love to hear some of them. Greatly appreciated, Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyNutcase0 -
Community Discussion - Are annotations an overlooked avenue for driving traffic from YouTube?
Happy Friday, Q&A friends! This week's discussion question comes from Amir Jaffari's YouMoz post from Thursday, January 28. Amir explains how he was able to use annotations to massively increase his YouTube videos' views without using ads, and raise his annotation CTR 22,400%. Have you tested annotations to see if they dramatically improve conversion rates? What were the results? What other strategies have you tried?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattRoney3 -
How to deal with number swaps for organic results?
Hi mozzers, We used to have a proxy URL for our paid search campaigns and we just transferred all of that into the main domain(that ranks organically). Since we were using phone numbers swapping for paid search, I am afraid that it will harm our organic local results as I am seeing phone number swapping. Can the bots distinguish a swap number and a real phone number or will it impact our local SEO results( because of an inconsistent phone number)? Thanks for letting me know!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
.htaccess 301 Redirect Help! Specific Redirects and Blanket Rule
Hi there, I have the following domains: OLD DOMAIN: domain1.co.uk NEW DOMAIN: domain2.co.uk I need to create a .htaccess file that 301 redirects specific, individual pages on domain1.co.uk to domain2.co.uk I've searched for hours to try and find a solution, but I can't find anything that will do what I need. The pages on domain1.co.uk are all kinds of filenames and extensions, but they will be redirected to a Wordpress website that has a clean folder structure. Some example URL's to be redirected from the old website: http://www.domain1.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=357 http://www.domain1.co.uk/adopt.php http://www.domain1.co.uk/register/?type=2 These will need to be redirected to the following URL types on the new domain: http://www.domain2.co.uk/charities/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/adopt/ http://www.domain2.co.uk/register/ I would also like a blanket/catch-all redirect from anything else on www.domain1.co.uk to the homepage of www.domain2.co.uk if there isn't a specific individual redirect in place. I'm literally tearing my hair out with this, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Townpages0 -
Please help me with your advice
Hi all, Couple years ago I started to build my business based on EMD domain. The intention was to create the source with the rich unique content. After a year of hard work the site achieved top 10 in Google and started to generate good amount of leads. Then Google announced the EMD Update and site lost the 90% of traffic (after Pandas updates our SERP was steady ) “ a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. ” But I don’t consider my site low-quality site, every page, every post is 100% unique and has been created only to share the knowledge with others… The site has EXCELLENT content from industry point of view.... Since the “ EMD Update “ I read hundreds , hundreds of different articles and opinions related to EMD update and finally I am confused and lost. What should I do… • Kill the site and start new one
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
• Get more links, but what type of links and how I should get them
• Keep hoping and pray....
• Or do something else Please help me with your advice0 -
Ugh...getting organized with my SEO
One thing I have learned about SEO is that it takes a patient, organized and task oriented person in order to be a good SEO'r. Luckily I have these skills which I think helps me with my own personal SEO, but at the same time I have other personality traits that work against me at the same time which can distract me from staying on track. I am a goal oriented person - I like to create weekly, monthly and yearly goals to help keep me focused. I am a patient person I am a task oriented person - I can repeat a task over and over again even if I hate it. I am very organized - I am a better house keeper than my wife (which drivers her crazy) but at the same time I have some other personality traits that work against me which counter act against my strong points. I can't leave a task undone and I have to complete it immediately I am a multi tasker - I can do 20 things at once. The struggle I have is even though I set goals, complete them and have the patience to do them at the same time I tend to work on things and won't move on until they are done. Even though their importance may not be as pressing an other areas. For instance I will work on getting rid of Google errors (404's), fixing code issues with the site people report instead of taking the time to work on the bigger things like fixing issues which effected me from Panda and Penguin. I get stuck on these smaller tasks since I know I can complete them faster, but they never seem to end. I would love to hear other models SEO'r use to help them organize their time management and spreading the tasks across the board and get everything done.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cbielich0 -
How do you explain the problem with several re-directs to a client?
I have a client who has done a lot of link building, and just migrated his site from an old platform to a more seo friendly one, but now he is moving pages on the new site. Old Site --> (301 re-direct) --> New Site --> (301 re-direct) --> Changed Page -->(301 re-direct) Changed page again, etc All his changes are making a lot of etra work for me every month and I feel he is wasting a lot of link juice, How Would you explain to the client why they shouldn't be using several re-directs? What can I do to make sure that they keep as much link juice as possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave0