Which Algorithm Change Hurt the Site? A causation/correlation issue
-
The attached graph is from google analytics, a correlation of about 14 months of Organic Google visits with algo changes, data from moz naturally
Is there any way to tell from this which will have affected the site? for example #1 or #2 seems to be responsible for the first dip, but #4 seems to fix it and it broke around 6, or is the rise between 4 and 7 an anomaly and actually 1 or 2 caused a slip from when it was released all the way to when 7 was released.
Sorry if the graph is a little cloak and dagger, that is partly because we don't have permissions to reveal much about the identity, and partly because we were trying to do a kind of double blind, separating the data from our biases
We can say though the different between the level at the start and end of the graph is at least 10,000 visits per day
-
It's really tough (and even inadvisable) to try to pin a traffic change to an algorithm update based solely on spikes in a graph. On rare occasion, it's pretty clear (Penguin is a good example, I've found), but in most cases there's just a lot of gray areas and the graph leaves out a mountain of data.
The big issue I see here is potentially seasonality and knowing what happened to the site and business. For example, you can look at #6 and #7 and call these dips, but that sort of ignores the spike. Is the dip the anomaly, or is the spike the anomaly? What drove up traffic between #4 and #6? Maybe that simply stopped, was a one-time event, or was seasonal.
Why was there volatility between #7 and #14 and then relative stability after #14? You could call #14 a "drop", but not knowing the timeline, it's hard to see how the curve might smooth in different windows. What it looks like is a period of highly volatile events followed by an evening out.
Without knowing the industry, the business, the history, and without segmenting this data, trying to make claims just based on dips and spikes in the graph is pretty dangerous, IMO. This could have virtually nothing to do with the algorithm, in theory.
-
I don't understand how dates would help? Was it not clear that the red lines are the dates of algo updates?
By abstracting the data the hope was to gain insight into how to read the graphs in relation to updates, and not just get help related to specific updates which wouldn't help much the next time we have to deal with a traffic drop problem. More a question of who to think rather than what to think.
Trying to read between the lines are you saying different algo changes take different amounts of time to kick in and that's why a more detailed graph is more useful? For example if #1 was the first penguin change, would your response be different if it was the first panda change?
-
You can use the Google Penalty Checker tool from Fruition: http://fruition.net/google-penalty-checker-tool/
I would not believe 100% on the tool results, but you can at least have an initial Analise, you'll need to go deeper to double check if this initial Analise is 100% relevant or not.
- Felipe
-
This doesn't tell me anything. If you at least had dates in there you could compare traffic dips to Google Algo Updates/Refreshes.
I understand you can't reveal the domain but I will be shocked if somebody here can tell you anything without further information. This place is full of brilliant minds, but that would take some sort of a mind-reader to tackle...
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
-
Search Console Crawl Errors/Not Found - Strange URLs
Hello, In Google Search Console under Crawl > Crawl Errors > Not found I have strange URLs like the following: https://www.domain.com//UbaOZ/
Reporting & Analytics | | chuck-layton
https://www.domain.com//UPhXZ/
https://www.domain.com//KaUpZ/WYdhZ/SnQZZ/MOcUZ/ There is no info in Linked From tab. Have you seen this type of error??
Does anyone know whats causing it??
How should it be fixed?? Thanks for reading and the help!0 -
Metadata and duplicate content issues
Hi there: I'm seeing a steady decline in organic traffic, but at the same time and increase in pageviews and direct traffic. My site has about 3,000 crawl errors!! Errors are duplicate content, missing description tags, and description too long. Most of these issues are related to events that are being imported from Google calendars via ical and the pages created from these events. Should we block calendar events from being crawled by using the disallow directive in the robots.txt file? Here's the site: https://www.landmarkschool.org/
Reporting & Analytics | | BGR0 -
Ecommerce site product link. How to handle a link that doesn't exist.
Suppose we have this product A, and we just have a single item for this. When the item is sold out we do not want to show it on the website saying "out of stock". Instead we would like to remove the product from out store which will now result in a url that doesn't exist. And google webmaster tool and Moz analytic will show them as page not found after they crawl over the site. Should i be generating a new sitemap.xml and update ? How do i handle those pages that don't exist anymore ? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | MindlessWizard0 -
If i was to drastically improve 5 critical things on my site, what would you suggest?
I have put in a lot of improvements on my site both onsite and offsite, I was just wondering from a critical point of view, what 5 things would you suggest would require an improvement, that will consequently lead to both, a better user experience and better Rankings on Google? Open even to criticism 🙂 Thank You..... Find my site here:http://bit.ly/1vW4GGP
Reporting & Analytics | | ConnectMedia0 -
Site operator result anomaly
"Site:" search for site:http://www.mycity4kids.com/Bangalore/activity-based-approach is showing 76 results.I am using SERPS Redux to collect all the indexed pages, but when I re-checked indexed status of these pages using "site operator" google showed that these pages are not indexed. What is the possible explanation for this? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | prsntsnh0 -
Gah, unfairly hit by massive google penalty :/
Hi Guys, We're the folk behind http://wpmu.org and have just been hit by a massive fall in google referrals, see attached 😕 There's no reason in webmaster tools for this, were not engaging in any spammy or dodgy practices and are a massively established and well staffed news *& tutorial site for WordPress (one of the biggest, in fact!) We've upgraded WP, and requested a referral, but without actually knowing what's going on it's extremely hard to figure out what to do 😕 Maybe we're a wrong hit regarding this: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/04/googles-new-search-algorithm-to-crack-down-on-black-hat-webspam/ ? At the moment pretty much the only thing I can think of is one of our authors being dodgy, but I don't think they would be, and I don't know how to go about finding out. Anyway, if you guys could take a look and let us know anything you think might be up, and share any advice that'd be super super appreciated! Cheers, James Screen-Shot-2012-04-27-at-8.39.32-AM.png
Reporting & Analytics | | WPMUDEV0 -
Conversion rates by browser & OS - any feedback/experts/experience?
Hi, Ive been evaluating conversion rates by operating system and by browser for a client. Ive picked up significant and somewhat disturbing trends. As you'd expect the bulk of traffic is coming from a Windows/Internet Explorer combination. This is unfortunately one of the worst combinations (Windows/Firefox & Windows/Safari did worse. Chrome/Windows was significantly the best combination with Windows). Windows also performs much worse than Mac. E.g. Windows/Firefox performs worse than Mac/Firefox. Overall conversion rate for Mac is 7.07% compared to 5.69% Windows. This is based on hundreds of thousands of visits and equates to tens of thousands of dollars difference in revenue. Generally later versions of browsers perform better on both main operating systems e.g IE 9.0 converts at 6.33% compared to 8.0 at 5.80% on Windows and Firefox 4.01 on the Mac converts at 7.57% compared to 3.6.16 at 6.54% (although this dataset is smaller than Windows/IE). Page load speeds (recorded in the clients analytics) are significantly faster on Mac than Windows (as expected really). Being Windows/IE and specifically Windows IE8 represents the bulk of traffic should we be addressing this? Will any optimisation negatively affect better performing Mac/Browser combinations? Understanding that Mac users equate to 'better' converting visitors - what else could be done there? Anyone have thoughts or experience on optimising pages for improved conversion rates via IE and Windows? Thanks in advance, Andy
Reporting & Analytics | | AndyMacLean0 -
Site: Query Question
Hi All, Question around the site: query you can execute on Google for example. Now I know it has lots of inaccuracies, but I like to keep a high level sight of it over time. I was using it to also try and get a high level view of how many product pages were indexed vs. the total number of pages. What is interesting is when I do a site: query for say www.newark.com I get ~748,000 results returned. When I do a query for www.newark.com "/dp/" I get ~845,000 results returned. Either I am doing something stupid or these numbers are completely backwards? Any thoughts? Thanks, Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | BenRush0