Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Can a large fluctuation of links cause traffic loss?

    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.

    Can a large fluctuation of links cause traffic loss?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    13
    1256
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DougRoberts
      DougRoberts last edited by

      I've been asked to look at a site that has lost 70/80% if their search traffic.

      This happened suddenly around the 17th April. Traffic dropped off over a couple of days and then flat-lined over the next couple of weeks.

      The screenshot attached, shows the impressions/clicks reported in GWT.

      When I investigated I found:

      • There had been no changes/updates to the site in question
      • There were no messages in GWT indicating a manual penalty
      • The number of pages indexed shows no significant change
      • There are no particular trends in keywords/queries affected (they all were.)

      I did discover that ahrefs.com showed that a large number of links were reported lost on the 17th April. (17k links from 1 domain). These links reappeared around the 26th/27th April. But traffic shows no sign of any recovery.

      The links in question were from a single development server (that shouldn't have been indexed in the first place, but that's another matter.)

      Is it possible that these links were, maybe artificially, boosting the authority of the affected site? Has the sudden fluctuation in such a large number of links caused the site to trip an algorithmic penalty (penguin?)

      Without going into too much detail as I'm bound by client confidentiality - The affected site is really a large database and the links pointing to it are generated by a half dozen or so article based sister sites based on how the articles are tagged. The links point to dynamically generated content based on the url.

      The site does provide a useful/valuable service/purpose - it's not trying to "game the system" in order to rank. That doesn't mean to say that it hasn't been performing better in search than it should have been.

      This means that the affected site has ~900,000 links pointing to is that are the names of different "entities".

      Any thoughts/insights would be appreciated. I've expresses a pessimistic outlook to the client, but as you can imaging they are confused and concerned.

      LVSceCN.png

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DougRoberts
        DougRoberts @JaneCopland last edited by

        Well the good news is, after all that, the development server is now safely behind authentication and the level of traffic to the site has returned to previous levels for the last three weeks. Fingers crossed it won't be going anywhere.

        It has been a wake-up call for the client though and it's started some useful discussions. Every cloud...

        Thanks for the support!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • JaneCopland
          JaneCopland @DougRoberts last edited by

          I hope not, for your sake! 13 hours later - do you see any new downturn?

          DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DougRoberts
            DougRoberts @DougRoberts last edited by

            Ad then, just as I say that - I see the following article:

            Google's Update From Last Week Reversing Itself?

            Sigh

            JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DougRoberts
              DougRoberts @JaneCopland last edited by

              Tracking rankings on this site is pretty impossible. Keywords/queries sending traffic are completely dependant on that day/week/months news stories. (I've come in late to this one - the client isn't tracking any specific keywords.)

              Traffic appears to have suddenly reverted to "normal". Yesterday's traffic was right back to where we'd expect it to be and today is looking pretty good too. I'm looking to see if there's a similar correlation with SERP volatility (which I'd guess you'd expect if there was an algorithm update at play...)

              I still feel as if I'd put my money on the large volume of links moving around.

              DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JaneCopland
                JaneCopland @DougRoberts last edited by

                Hi Doug,

                Ah - sorry, I misunderstood about the links disappearing and the rankings suffering on the same day. I am not sure how quickly Ahrefs updates - it might be slightly quicker than Moz, but we're still talking a possible couple of weeks in between. That would be enough to cause rankings and traffic to go down if those links, despite being dynamically generated, were helping before.

                Is the significant improvement in traffic coming with improved rankings that you can track? It's incredibly frustrating to have lost keyword data in times like this - you're relying on the rankings you're already tracking through tools like Moz to see which keywords are on the rise...

                DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • DougRoberts
                  DougRoberts @JaneCopland last edited by

                  Hi Jane,

                  As is all to frequent - it's a bit like hitting a moving target...

                  I don't believe there have been any other changes to the site, but I can't confirm that with anything approaching absolute confidence.

                  The one thing to be aware of is that links to this site are generated automatically based on the way news articles are tagged on "sister sites". This means that there's a considerable ebb and flow of links pointing to the site.

                  The development site that was pointing all these links additional links to the target site has now been placed behind some authentication (this happened a week or so ago). Even though some of the links from this site had be rediscovered before that was done - there was no sign of any upswing.

                  Nothing that I'm aware of has changed, but over the weekend/today we're now seeing a significant improvement in organic traffic (it's too early to talk about a recovery though.) GWT is also started showing a lift in the impressions too. We'll need to see what happens over the next couple of days.

                  I don't think that the disappearance of the links happened on exactly the same day as the site lost it's traffic. All I can tell is that ahrefs reported the -17k links on the same day. I've not been able to establish when exactly the links were removed. (Important lesson for the web developer here - make sure you keep a decent change-log!)

                  Following David's tip off, I did a bit of digging around any updates that may have affected things.

                  Mozcast showed a couple of days of activity on the 17/18th and Rank Ranger had an indication of an update at the same time. Serpmetrics etc also had similar indications.

                  Unfortunately I've not managed to get any info on the kind of sites/pages that were affected or what features they might have had in common so it's hard to say whether we're looking at the impact of a update on google's side or whether it's the links/local changes that are the cause. (Or some combo of the two!)

                  The good news is that it's been a wake-up call to the client. They now realise that the site in question has some significant weaknesses that need to be addressed and can't/shouldn't just rely on these "unnatural" links from their sister sites!

                  "Keep calm, don't panic and don't over-react!"

                  wyx4WdD.jpg E08v2E6.jpg

                  JaneCopland 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • JaneCopland
                    JaneCopland last edited by

                    Hi Doug,

                    Checking in on this one - has there been any change in the traffic, or have you uncovered any more information (especially regarding any other updates that might have affected the site) that could have had an effect during that time?

                    Losing a large chunk of links can hurt a site, but it would be incredibly quick for the link loss and traffic loss to happen on the same day. It would take Google the day to note that all 17k links were gone, then you're probably looking at a number of days for that to actually play out in search results.

                    DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • Kingof5
                      Kingof5 @DougRoberts last edited by

                      http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-brewing-18447.html

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • DougRoberts
                        DougRoberts @Kingof5 last edited by

                        Hi David, do you have any details? If this is the case it would be nice to compare sites and see what the common factors might be.

                        Kingof5 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Kingof5
                          Kingof5 last edited by

                          Many people had big drops around the same time period, so likely an algorithm update that impacted you.

                          DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • DougRoberts
                            DougRoberts @MattAntonino last edited by

                            I don't think it's affected any anchor ratios. The is a huge level of diversification in the anchor texts used. 17k out of 900k isn't a large proportion.

                            The interlinking from sister sites has been in place for a long long time - it's not something that's been added recently.

                            I've dropped you a PM.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • MattAntonino
                              MattAntonino last edited by

                              I understand client confidentiality - if you want to PM me the link to look at privately, I'd be happy to.

                              That being said, anchors finally get too high?  Did losing 17k knock them WAY out of whack?  (Anchor on the other links was 18%, now 35% or something?)

                              "links pointing to it are generated by a half dozen or so article based sister sites" = this could definitely be the issue as well.  I have a few ideas but hard to tell without knowing just a bit more.

                              DougRoberts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • 1 / 1
                              • First post
                                Last post

                              Got a burning SEO question?

                              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                              Start my free trial


                              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.

                              • See all categories

                              Related Questions

                              • seoman10

                                Footer no follow links

                                Just interested to know when putting links at the foot of the site some people use no-follow tags.  I'm thinking about internal pages and social networks. Is this still necessary or is it an old-fashioned idea?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman10
                                0
                              • Eric_OWPP

                                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.

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_OWPP
                                1
                              • BeckyKey

                                Too many on page links

                                Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
                                1
                              • placementLabs

                                How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?

                                Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs
                                0
                              • PeteC12

                                Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages

                                Hello Mozzers, I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow. My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ? Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated? Any thoughts greatly appreciated thanks Pete

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
                                0
                              • PeteC12

                                H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?

                                Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit  or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
                                0
                              • mtthompsons

                                Dummy links in posts

                                Hi, Dummy links in posts. We use 100's of sample/example lnks as below http://<domain name></domain name> http://localhost http://192.168.1.1 http:/some site name as example which is not available/sample.html many more is there any tag we can use to show its a sample and not a link and while we scan pages to find broken links they are skipped and not reported as 404 etc? Thanks

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons
                                0
                              • JohnW-UK

                                One Way Links vs Two Way Links

                                Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!

                                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK
                                0

                              Get started with Moz Pro!

                              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                              Start my free trial
                              Products
                              • Moz Pro
                              • Moz Local
                              • Moz API
                              • Moz Data
                              • STAT
                              • Product Updates
                              Moz Solutions
                              • SMB Solutions
                              • Agency Solutions
                              • Enterprise Solutions
                              Free SEO Tools
                              • Domain Authority Checker
                              • Link Explorer
                              • Keyword Explorer
                              • Competitive Research
                              • Brand Authority Checker
                              • MozBar Extension
                              • MozCast
                              Resources
                              • Blog
                              • SEO Learning Center
                              • Help Hub
                              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                              • How-to Guides
                              • Moz Academy
                              • API Docs
                              About Moz
                              • About
                              • Team
                              • Careers
                              • Contact
                              Why Moz
                              • Case Studies
                              • Testimonials
                              Get Involved
                              • Become an Affiliate
                              • MozCon
                              • Webinars
                              • Practical Marketer Series
                              • MozPod
                              Connect with us

                              Contact the Help team

                              Join our newsletter
                              Moz logo
                              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                              • Accessibility
                              • Terms of Use
                              • Privacy

                              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.