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
-
Direct Traffic has Drastically Increased
Hi, I have noticed in Google analytics that direct traffic of one of my website is increased drastically. I didn't participate in Email Marketing or any other paid campaigns however direct traffic is continuously increasing. I checked all sources, locations, browsers, filters etc but didn't get any findings. Please help.
Reporting & Analytics | | RuchiPardal0 -
In Google Analytics, what is the correct format for excluding traffic from single IP address?
In the past, when we've setup a filter to exclude a single IP address, we just entered the IP address normally. For example, 64.68.82.164. However, I was researching how to exclude a range of IP addresses and found out that I might be using the wrong format to filter a single IP address. Is it supposed to be 64.68.82.164 or 64.68.82.164? Will it still work if it was entered without the escape characters? Thanks in advance Moz community for your assistance!
Reporting & Analytics | | peteboyd0 -
Direct traffic coming to URLs with /rss_feedIP#
I'm doing a site audit for an organization that has a bunch of really messy old Drupal sites. In looking at their traffic, I see that a majority of it is coming to landing pages that look like this: http://clientsdomain.com/rss_feed173.8.208.97 plus other IP addresses. The bounce rate is 100% and time on site is less than a second. It looks like something that an RSS feed tool might use, but I've never seen something like it before. It creates its own landing page, hits the site, then appears to bounce. This is making their Analytics data look a whole lot worse than the site is actually doing, since the bounce rate is 100% on all that fake traffic. I have some experience with Drupal, but I've never seen anything like this in Drupal or any other CMS. Has anyone out there ever experienced something like this, where direct traffic comes to an rss feed landing page and bounces immediately?
Reporting & Analytics | | newwhy0 -
Bing Webmaster Tools data discrepency on traffic
Hi, For a given time period in Bing Webmaster Tools it says that combined clicks from Bing and Yahoo organic search are about 4,700 total, for the same time period in Google Analytics, combining sessions for Bing and Yahoo Organic comes out to about 8,900 total. Has anyone else experienced this discrepancy? Is this common? How can I get 8900 visits from 4700 clicks?
Reporting & Analytics | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Impressions in GWT have dropped to nothing, but my page is still ranking normally
Hello Everyone, I'm seeing a strange issue. On the 22nd of this month Webmasters tools started showing 6 impressions per day down from hundreds or thousands. I thought I was hit with a huge penalty for my keywords but they are still ranking where they have for the past month or two on Google. In analytics my organic traffic is stable. It just seems to be GWT showing the massive drop. My domain is: http://Patchofland.com Any Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | PatchofLand0 -
Direct traffic decline
I've noticed a few of our sites (tour, hotel, and local attraction) which are very established and reasonably high brand recognition that have experienced a significant decrease in branded traffic (-20-30% compared to same period from the previous year) the past few months. There have been no changes in offline marketing though we are seeing a slight decrease in visitor arrivals (-5%) and higher hotel room rates. Is there a chance that Google's not set may be affecting direct traffic numbers? Any other thoughts on how we can figure out why brand traffic is dipping? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | SoulSurfer80 -
Bounce rate consistently dropping
We started using SEO MOZ campaigns and crawl diagnostics for our site in November 2011. At that time, our bounce rate was 57.58%. From there, it has consistently dropped. Dec. 57% Jan. 24.86% Feb. 14.61% March 17.48 % April 12.35% We started out with 1,000's of errors showing up in the crawl diagnostics, down to under 50. could this be associated with the bounce rate drop?
Reporting & Analytics | | Stevej240 -
Drastic keyword position drop from time to time
Hey guys, I'm having the following issue. My keyword position in SERP is usually 10-11 but sometimes (like once a month or so) it drops to like to position 46 or something of that kind. Why would that be happening and what can I do to avoid that stuff?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0