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.
Website organic traffic unchanged, impressions took a 98% drop in the last week.
-
Hi all,
I have a very curious predicament and I'd be grateful if someone could shed some light on the situation.
As mentioned in the title, organic traffic to our website has remained unchanged, but organic impressions have taken a 98% drop in the last week. This happened suddenly over one day; on October 22, impressions were 700, on October 23, they were 500, and on October 24 they drastically dropped to 50. The next two days they were at 22 and then up to 35.
Organic traffic, however, showed the normal "weekend drop" as of October 24, and is still showing normal level (even increased a bit) continuing into this week.
These are organic impressions according to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools.
We did perform a complete site redesign a month ago. Could this be an effect from the redesign?
We also noticed drop in Domain Authority, but our competitors suffered a similar (if not greater) drop as well, so we wondered if it could be due in part to the algorithm update.
If anyone could shed some light on the situation I would be so appreciative!
Thanks!
-
Nope, This seems kind of normal. Organic traffic can be coming from Bing and Yahoo also. I think you are fine.
I noticed a jump in rankings also. That is why you want to make sure you don't drop below your lowest average, if you do then you might see a dramatic decrease in your rankings when everything settles down.
-
Thanks for the response!
In response to your questions, the really confounding part is that we are actually ranking higher for our keywords and all seems normal in terms of landing pages (so says Google Analytics and MOZ).
I don't understand how we could have an increase in organic traffic yet a decrease in organic impressions! Am I missing something?
-
The Panda/Penguin updates have shaken up the rankings quite consistently over the past couple of weeks. I noticed that my company, and my competitors have dropped a couple of points as well. I don't think that drop in DA is something to freak out about right now. If you have not received any notices from Google, it could just be that things are still trying settle down after the topsy turvy couple of weeks the engines have seen.
As far as search impressions go, there are a few things that could be happening. If you changed your URLs when you redesigned your website then you can start to see reduced impressions as your new pages become indexed and start moving up in the searches. Something to be careful of is if you see your impressions dip below your lowest average before the Penguin update. I have a few SEO friends who saw huge surges in impressions as Penguin was rolling out, and then a decline that they haven't been able to recover from. As long as you are staying above that lowest day of impressions you should be fine.
It could also just be a lack of searches on those days. It is something to keep an eye on, but probably too soon to start worrying about. After updates, you kind of have to wait and see for a couple of weeks. The results are all messed up and usually don't start to even out for awhile. As far as I know, the Penguin update still isn't complete, so that could still cause some trouble for your impressions.
Have you checked your landing pages report to see where your organic searches are coming from? How about your keyword rankings? Have you noticed any changes out of the ordinary?
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
-
Best practice for multilanguage website ( PHP feature based on Browser or Geolocalisation)
Hi Moz Experts I would like to know what does it the best practice for multilanguage website for the default language ? There are several PHP features to help users to get the right language when they come from SEO and direct; present the default language by browser language, by gelolocalisation, etc. However, which one is the most appropriate for Quebec company that try to get outside Canada ? PRO and CONS. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | johncurlee0 -
SEO strategy for UK / US websites
Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan
Web Design | | JaanMSonberg0 -
New Website launch, asking for feedback
Hey Guys, I just launched my new website. I just asking around for feedback. Please check it out if you have time and let me know www.benjaminmarc.com
Web Design | | benjaminmarcinc1 -
Drop Down Menus and Crawlability
Hello, We are working on a complete site redesign. One of the mock-ups that are being reviewed is of a page that encompasses and entire category of products, but the only way the user can see the products is to fill out several drop down menus, and then a subset of products that match that criteria will appear. Once that list appears, the user will then be able to click on each of the products and will then be taken to the product page. I'm concerned that this layout will pose a crawlability issue since click activity and drop down menus have always been a problem for bots in the past, has anything changed? Will the bot be able to follow the links to these product pages if it can't see them since it can't fill out the form? Also, depending on the functionality of this 'form', I'm assuming the product listing will be populated dynamically and pulled from another source, which means that the product links will not live in the html of the page, and hence cannot be crawled. Does anyone know how this is normally handled? Do the actual results usually live elsewhere or does it live in the html of that page? Any thoughts or clarity around this would be appreciated.
Web Design | | Colbys0 -
E-Commerce Website Architecture - Cannibalization between Product Categories and Blog Categories?
Hi, I have an e-commerce site that sells laptops. My main landing pages and category pages are as follows:
Web Design | | BeytzNet
"Toshiba Laptops", "Samsung Laptops", etc. We also run a WP blog with industry news.
The posts are divided into categories which are basically as our landing pages.
The posts themselves usually link to the appropriate e-commerce landing page.
For example: a post about a new Samsung Laptop which is categorized in the blog under "Samsung Laptops" will naturally link somewhere inside to the "samsung laptops" ecommerce landing page. Is that good or do the categories on the blog cannibalize my more important e-commerce section landing pages? Thanks0 -
Subdomains For Real Estate Website
I am currently working on a proposal for a clients Wordpress website development which includes ongoing SEO after the website is developed. I have looked into a number of options and the one that seems the most cost effective involves using subdomains for the individual listings pages. What I want: clientsdomain.com/listings/idxnumber/ What I can get for a decent price: listings.clientsdomain.com/idxnumber/ So the majority of the website will actually exist on a subdomain because the IDX API will automatically populate pages for all of the MLS listings in the area (hundreds or thousands). Meanwhile the domain itself will have all the neighborhood pages and other optimized content, blogs and whatnot. My concern is that dividing the website like this will have negative effects on SEO. There wont be duplicate content across subdomain and main domain, but they will share a lot of links back and forth. I haven't found any recent sources on the topic. Almost everything I have found says that dividing a website in this manor is bad for SEO, but these articles are often many years old. Does anyone know of a Wordpress plugin/IDX company that can provide a solution that doesn't use a subdomain and actually just lists each MLS page within a directory? I am open to using another platform, I am just most familiar with Wordpress. Will using a subdomain in the ways mentioned above have a profound negative effect on SEO? Thank you for your time in responding, I greatly appreciate it.
Web Design | | TotalMarketExposure0 -
CSS vs Javascript vs JQuery drop down navigation
For a user / seo perspective, what is the best way to code a drop down menu nav bar? Is it best to use css, javascript or a scripting library like jquery? I am thinking about overall best practice that will not have a negative impact on serps. I am also thinking about what will work best on all types of devices i.e. desk tops, lap tops, smart phones and tablets. What are the Pro's & Cons of Using CSS for Drop Down Menus. What are the Pro's & cons of using Javascript for drop down menus. And the same question for jquery. Thank you all in advance for your ideas.
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Drop Down Menus & SEO?
Do these typically have a negative impact on SEO? I know this is kind of a vague question, does it make it harder to spider? Are there SEO friendly ways of coding these? There are so many sites out there that have these, so I've got to assume it's different on a case by case basis.
Web Design | | MichaelWeisbaum0