Google webmaster tools hiccup?
-
Our flagship website, up until March 16 was getting 1600 impressions and 300 branded clicks per day as per GWT. After 3/16, branded search fell to 300 impressions and 25 clicks per day. Our rankings haven't changed, and neither has our traffic. We would definitely notice the decline in GA and Core Metrics, and it is running about the same.
according to GWT, 75% fewer people started searching for our brand on 3/16, but all of our other metrics are indicating otherwise.
Has anyone seen this before? Is it a tracking issue on our side?
-
Hi there
Going through my tools, I didn't see anything too glaring. It could be a tracking issue you like you said, but one thing I would point out is that when I checked out your backlinks in Majestic, I noticed you had hundreds to thousands to hundreds of thousands of backlinks coming from certain sites. While this may not be an issue at the moment, I would take a look at your backlink profile and clean up what you can.
I would also take a look at the Google Webmaster Help Guide, particularly under About Search Queries Data. They state the following:
Webmaster Tools data may differ slightly from the data displayed in other tools, such as Google Analytics. Possible reasons for this include:
- Some processing of our source data might cause your stats to differ from stats listed in other sources (e.g., to eliminate duplicates and visits from robots). However, these changes should not be significant.
- Some tools, such as Google Analytics, track traffic only from users who have enabled JavaScript in their browser.
- Some tools define "keywords" differently. For example, the Keywords tool in Google AdWords displays the total number of Google searches for that keyword across the web. The Webmaster Tools Search Queries page, however, shows how many of those keyword searches returned your pages in Google search results, and this is a smaller number.
- There can be a lag between when the numbers are calculated and when they are visible to webmasters. Although data gets published in intervals, we continually collect it. Normally, however, collected data should be available in 2-3 days.
- Time zones matter. Search Queries tracks daily data according to Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). If your other systems use different time zones, your daily views may not match exactly.
- To protect user privacy, Google doesn't aggregate all data. For example, we might not track some queries that are made a very small number of times or those that contain personal or sensitive information.
If you can no longer see a search query you saw recently, make sure you haven't filtered the results by country or type of search. At the moment, I can't exactly pinpoint what the error may be, other than to give your WMT and Analytics a quick audit and make sure that everything is being tracked properly. I would also take a note of the backlink profile and check Google Trends for your top terms and see if you can spot anything there.
Hope this helps a bit- I will let others chime in, good luck!
-
The website is www.amerimark.com. The number of impressions for "Amerimark" and "Amerimark.com" dropped by 75% starting on March 16 2015. We are ranked #1 for both keywords, and that hasn't changed.
We've been making changes to the site, but this looks more external.
-
Hi there
Would you mind sharing the domain? I would like to research this a bit more. It sounds like there might be an issue with WMT, but then again I can't be sure.
A couple of questions:
Did you have any major on-site changes in mid March?
Were you ranking for irrelevant keywords/queries up through mid March and they are now removed?
What do your "Top Pages" look like? Does this reflect in GA?
Did you single out web / mobile data to see if it's device driven?
Did you think about conducting a backlink audit or content audit?Just some things to think about. Again, if you could share the URL that would be awesome. Keep me posted, thanks!
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
-
Conflicting data in Google Analytics
Hi Guys I've been looking at the data for a client in Google analytics and I was wondering if anyone knows why some of the data doesn't tally up. In my case its the following: Under Aquisition
Reporting & Analytics | | Relative
No of Sessions for a Keyword shown in Organic Search tab (compared to)
No of Clicks for a Query in the Search Engine Optimisation tab For example, for a brand term, Google are showing 17 Sessions in Organic Search.
For the same term Google are showing 90 Clicks in the Queries section of Search Engine Optimisation OK, we know that Google are a little cloak and dagger regarding keyword data but surely Sessions and Clicks for the same keyword should be identical unless I'm missing something.0 -
Google Analytics to sub domains
Hi, I have a site xyz.com and two separate sites on sub domains xyz.com/abc and xyz.com/def. What's the best way to go about with GA such that I can get all the data in the same place. Should I use the GA code for xyz.com on sub domains as well? Or should I create separate profiles?
Reporting & Analytics | | mayanksaxena0 -
Exact Match in Google Search (Not Adwords)
I was going throught the list of keywords that have sent traffic to my site over the last 7 years and cam across one "A516 grade 70" that had hundreds of variants. Now in a lot of cases search volumes were different as were SERPS. We've tested a few variants with reworked pages (70% similar to original but optimised for variant keyword) and see good SERPS and traffic results. Theres obviously some diminishing returns here for us but the interesting question is when to these variants become an exact match and when not? In some cases the variants are unique because of the spacig, periods and hyphens used. there isn't a clear correlation with exact matc though. Insight appreciated. (Sorry for spelling errors. Form doesn't play nicely with iPad)
Reporting & Analytics | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Blended results in google ???
I am a little confused about my search results. My ranking on google is displayed as #42. HOWEVER, I am #1 in the LOCAL results... what does that mean? Am I really #42? or am I #1 because local is listed over the organic results?
Reporting & Analytics | | drshahprs0 -
What tools are people using to analyse clicked links
Hi, What tools do you use/recommend to analyse what/where links are being clicked on a page. I have seen a few mentions about CrazyEgg but are there any free (but good) tools around worth using?
Reporting & Analytics | | NeilD0 -
Tips for migrating Google News traffic?
We are about to relaunch a site that gets a lot of Google News traffic. We are not changing domain, but the site structure is changing greatly, with the URLs of both news index pages and articles being shaken up. Obviously, we've 301-ed every page to its closest equivalent on the new site. We've also got a news sitemap. As we are not changing domain, is there anything further we need to do to help protect our Google News traffic. On a related note, does anyone have a relaible way of measuring traffic from Google News listings in universal search?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
Google analytics for your mobile sub-domain
Hi All, I have just started mobile sub-domain for my desktop site. But I don't to know how to configure analytics for mobile sub-domain. I want to track result between desktop and mobile site. Can any one help me to sort out this problem? Waiting for reply
Reporting & Analytics | | Hexpress0 -
Does using Google URL Builder override original source in Google Analytics?
During a free trial on Tatango, we send daily emails to customers to give them advice, resources, etc. We started using Google URL Builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 to create individual links in each of these emails, but when the customer purchases a subscription now, the source in GA isn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. they are all showing up as the source we created using the URL builder for each email. Does Google URL builder override the original source in Google Analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | Tatango0