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
-
How can I distinguish new visitors from existing (customers) in Google Analytics to attain an avg # of new visitor traffic per day/week?
i do marketing for a business software site where we have hundreds of clients and each account has on avg 100 users. I am having a very challenging time to attempting to figure out the real number of unique traffic that our site receives. **(what's creating the issue is that we have thousands of user accounts where our users log-in via our site to access our app/platform). Would love help with this! Christian
Reporting & Analytics | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Why would on-site search queries show up as referral traffic?
The site analytics have been set up for over a year and suddenly last month there was a huge spike in referral traffic (1100+ sessions). Upon further investigation, the majority of it was coming directly from internally, either as mysite.com or search.mysite.com and the landing pages from the referrals are all /search.html?query=* This was never an issue before so I'm trying to understand what could have changed. I'm following up with the client to find out if their dev team may have changed anything related to their search engine but I'm wondering if there may be another explanation. A few notes: previously mysite.com / search.mysite.com were not in the Referral Exclusion list. I've added them now but this was never an issue before. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | SEMnMs0 -
How do I track specific referral traffics journey through a website?
Hello, A client has asked us to track the journey each separate referral traffic visitor takes through out the website. I have had a look through analytics and am not sure how to ensure I can do this for all referral traffic visitors? Can anyone help? Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | mblsolutions0 -
In Analytic Ipad Traffic Showing in Desktop, tablet and Mobile all 3 is it possible?
Hi, In Google Analytic when i see Mobile Overview in secondary dimension when i select Mobile device Model and when i search Ipad then i can see ipad in tablet, desktop and mobile why is it so? Ipad traffic and transaction should appear only on mobile whey it is showing on desktop and tablet? John..
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
Referral Traffic Issue
I'm working on a site that has low traffic volumes due to its niche. That's fine but we are daily getting referral traffic from unrelated domains without a link. These visits are always 100% bounce which is impacting the overall click.through rate. The domains are not the same and different ones come through all the time, so it is difficult to keep on top of. Any ideas what could be going on here and an effective way of dealing with this?
Reporting & Analytics | | MickEdwards0 -
Google Analytics: How to Track Blog Traffic that Enter the Purchase Funnel?
I've been trying to figure this out for awhile, but I have had no luck. The current ecommerce store that I work for is trying to find out how to track how many people coming in via the blog are converting/buying. The site lives on Magento and the blog is on wordpress and they both use the same Google Analytics code. Site URL: http://website.com/ Blog URL: http://website.com/blog Is there anyway to do this so you can see which landing pages are driving conversions? If not, Is it possible to set up Google Analytics to show conversions and revenue coming from people who enter through blog directory?
Reporting & Analytics | | Erik-M0 -
Getting Traffic for an Unranked Phrase
Over the last month, 40% of a client's search traffic as resulted from a phrase that they are not even ranking for in the top 100; nor are they popping up on PPC ads for it. How is this happening? I feel like I am missing something very obvious.
Reporting & Analytics | | ScriptiLabs0 -
Drop in rankings
Hey Mozzers, In the past week 8 of my keywords have drastically dropped and I have no idea why. We had been doing link building campaign and things were lookign good. We stopped it and crash, all the kerword rankings dropped. Would be awesome if someone couls shed some light onto this one? the site in question is www.gunshotdigital.com thank you so much!
Reporting & Analytics | | vijayvasu0