Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic
-
We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc...
We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend.
I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is.
I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed.
I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic.
Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?
-
I would work on other things for a few days.
If your sales or other conversions are holding up then don't worry.
Fewer spiders can be a good thing. You can go into webmaster tools to see if google is still visiting (look under crawl stats).
-
thanks for the responses! all good things to know.
at what point should I start to worry?
-
A lot of analytics programs include robot visits in the direct traffic. Could simply be fewer scrapers or a change in spidering patterns.
If your conversions are holding up I would not worry about this.
-
Yup, I mean direct traffic. The referral traffic and traffic from search has stayed at normal levels. Only our direct traffic has dropped.
Our rankings have not fallen.
It is possible that our URLs were modified without proper redirects but I doubt it. The URLs that existed before the changes are the same, the only ones that have changed are the ones we either removed (obsolete categories) or newly created.
What other pieces of information should I provide to give you a better idea?
-
Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic....
Do you really mean direct - like people typing in your URL or using bookmarks? Or, are you asking about total traffic from search and other sources?
Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?
You have access to more information than we do. Check your analytics to see where your site has lost traffic.
Have your rankings fallen?
When your site was modified were URLs changed without redirects?
You have not provided enough information for anything other than guesses from us.
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
-
Tracking Google places (7 pack listing) traffic in google analytics
Is there a way to see Google Places traffic (traffic from users clicking through the 7 pack listings) segmented in Google analytics ? Normally is it just lumped together with the organic traffic ? Can you see the search phrases used to find your site, or do they also show up under 'not provided' when from Google Places. Im aware i can see some limited data in the Google Places analytics, but these seem to be 2 days behind when ever i view them.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sam-P0 -
Strange Spike in Direct / None traffic
Over the past week or so, my client's Australian personal training website has experienced a dramatic spike in Google Analytics sessions (see attached screenshot). All the visits are coming from various states in the US and via the "Direct / None" source. All the visits are less than 1 second in duration so I'm assuming it's coming from some sort of automated bots. I'm worried for a couple of reasons: A) Could somebody be deliberately spamming the site to adversely affect our rankings? B) How do I get rid of this traffic from our analytics reports? 7kwsJnB
Reporting & Analytics | | Dave_Eddy0 -
Hour of the day that my analytics goals are being triggered within the all traffic report.
I am trying to identify the hour of the day that particular keywords (organic and PPC) are triggering my goals. Ideally I'd like to be able to use the all traffic report with the secondary dimension set as keyword. Hopefully I'm missing something simple, thanks all. Mark
Reporting & Analytics | | mde9110 -
Rank #1 for a 110,000/month query search, but barely any traffic?
Hi guys, As it says in the title, we've recently reached the absolute #1 position for a certain key phrase in the travel industry which the Google Keyword Tool tells me averages 110,000 local (165,000 global) searches a month... however we have received barely any traffic at all over the past TWO months for it and I'm trying my best to determine why. We've checked on multiple different devices with all forms of personalisation off, different browsers, 3G connections as opposed to office Wi-FI etc. and it still returns us as the #1 rank. Meta descriptions and title tags are pretty much pristine if I don't say so myself, however what should be a very lucrative key phrase is currently returning little to no traffic results. Has anyone had experience in a similar situation to this? Any possible causes that I might be missing? Would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | ExperienceOz0 -
Changed URL's, traffic dropped from 2k week to 1K week. Need advice!
Hi Mozers, I recently changed my URLs for my ecommerce site and my traffic went from 2,000 visitors a week to 1,000 visitors a week, over a 3 week period. Traffic is down, so are unique Kwds. I need advice on why this happened and what I should do moving forward. To brief, I have a ecommerce website, www.ecustomfinishes.com. I noticed pattern that a lot of my URLs with a unique URL structure (URL.Com/ProductDescription/ProductName) were getting a lot of entrances ~30-50 a month, and others that followed the path of my subcategory (URL.com/SubCat/Product) were getting 0-3 entrances a month. The seo pattern was that those with unique product URLs were hitting long tail Kwds, and those URLs with /subcategory/product were getting far less traffic. I changed 150 or so urls to be unique. Good idea, I thought. Since then: CON: Since then my traffic dropped from 2200 visitors a week to 1100 visitors a week. -25% week to week, over 3 weeks CON: # of non-paid keywords sending visits: -25% week to week, over 3 weeks PRO: my Urls receiving entrances +10% week to week, over 3 weeks REF: http://imgur.com/GwZT8 Question: What are your best suggestions moving forward? Any advice is much appreciated, Thank you!!! abBN3
Reporting & Analytics | | longdenc_gmail.com0 -
Amazon.com inc.increase in direct traffic
Hi All, I have seen a increase of direct traffic from hostname amazon.com inc. This only happened on one day. Any ideas what/why it is? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Sayers0 -
How to see traffic for specific keywords in GA
Hell guys, What i want to achieve is to generate a list of specific keywords showing traffic for a certain periode of time. I also want so be able to compare this time period with historical data. I want a list as shown in: Traffic sources -> sources -> search -> organic. This shows a list of keywords generating traffic out of the organic search results. When you use a filter you can only use one word so it seems. I just want to create that list but with the specific keywords i choose to display. I tried advanced reports and advanced segments but that doesn't really give me what i want. The idea behind this whole thing is that i want to give my client an overview of the traffic received on the words we are optimizing for. this traffic has to be compared to the previous month so they can see clearly if there were changes. Thx !
Reporting & Analytics | | 5MMedia0 -
Want to link to GA profile, but the one I want is not showing in drop-down
How can I manually add the correct Google Analytics data in to my account? The two options I see on the drop-down are not the ones I want to select and I don't see a way to do it manually. Help!
Reporting & Analytics | | Uniqueson0