Decreased organic traffic but increased Webmaster Tool Queries
-
We have a client who has had a significant decrease in organic traffic this last month (about 20%) but in Webmaster tools it tells me there was an increase in impressions and clicks. How can these both be accurate?
-
There can be multiple reasons why this could have happened but before I start, I personally do not trust the data by search console and the main reason is because its delayed but I don’t think it can’t be that wrong that it will challenge the data provided in Google Analytics.
Here are some of the possibilities:
- Check your analytics IP data (ignore traffic from…) There is a possibility that Analytics is ignoring some of the data as instructed whereas webmaster console is looking into every detail.
- Very nice point by Matt. Maybe analytics data is not available on every page on the website and Search Console is tracking that traffic as well.
Also, make sure that you are looking in to the full traffic data in analytics and not just the search traffic only as search console will be tracking the data from search, referral, paid and more.
I believe a quick audit should point where the problem is!
Hope this helps!
-
I can think of a few ways...
-
Did "organic" include traffic from another search engine that is now entirely gone? I ranked #1 for "domains" on Bing for a day or two. Guess what that did to my traffic? lol
-
Analytics may not be setup on all new pages. Traffic going to (for instance) blog posts that are posted to social and then picked up by Google but not yet crawled? I had a REALLY big client who had installed GA once but never followed up on all their (manually created) pages. This is why I love Wordpress and template CMS but hate everything else. You can run a Screaming Frog crawl that checks whether the GA code is on every page.
-
Was the GA code used on ANOTHER site and subsequently removed? WMT would only show you the one site. The same GA code can be posted to 10 sites. When 8 go down, your organic traffic would decrease but your WMT would stay the same.
I'm sure there are at least another 5 ways that this could happen. It would definitely require a bit more investigation but yes, both can happen at the same time.
-
-
How are you segmenting your analytics reports? It might be possible that you're excluding locations or devices? I also wouldn't trust Search Console data to be accurate. It's delayed, and only a sample of the true traffic the site is getting. Use it more for research/help on optimization rather than using it as true data for the website.
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
-
Forecasting DA increases after merging domains?
Hi all, I wondered if anyone had any suggestions for forecasting DA changes after merging two domains. The context is that we have two sites and there is argument to combine them into one. To cut a long story short, one of the considerations is how much DA might increase if we migrated one domain into the other. Domain 1 has a DA in the 30s. Domain 2 (which we'd redirect) has a DA in the late 20s. Around 90% of the LRDs are 'incremental'. Surely there is a way to forecast what the increase in DA would be if we decided to combine? I haven't found anything online...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rl_uk0 -
Site wide decrease in featured snippets
Hi, As of April we have seen a huge drop in the number of featured snippets and I'm unsure why. No major changes have been made to the site. We did submit to to Google news at a similar times (failed unfortunately) I have plotted our featured snippets and competitors featured snippets form data from Semrush and most our competitors have seen a fall in number of featured snippets. There has also been a large fall for some categories specifically. But overall we have seen the largest drop out of everyone. (See attached Graph) Does anyone have any clues as to why Google would remove multiple featured snippets from one website in particular. Thanks. OwseH
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sally940 -
Website Not Ranking Organically - Not Links, Not Domain Authority...
This is regarding the domain: http://lesliekays.com We got a new client about 5 months back who had a website that was hacked. It took several months, but we've cleaned up most of the spammy links and completely rebuilt their website. We have been successful with every other client that we have ever done getting our customers to rank well organically, but we just can't figure this one out. I'm willing to offer a REWARD to the single person who can figure this out for us. (Let's not get carried away, a small reward). This customer has great quality links to their site too. We are looking for answers other than: 1. Backlinks 2. Content 3. Malware 4. Domain or Page authority 5. 404 errors 6. We have utilized Googles Webmaster tools endlessly It is something else and we can not identify it! Let me know what you think! I will give a public shout out to the person who helps us identify this issue!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tosten0 -
URL Errors for SmartPhone in Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools
Howdy all, In recent weeks I have seen a steady increase in the number of smartphone related url errors on Googles Search Console (formerly webmaster tools). THe crawler appears to be searching for a /m/ or /mobile/ directory within the URLs. Why is it doing this? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately this is for an unresponsive site, would setting the viewport help stop the issue for know until my new responsive site is launched shortly. Cheers fello Mozzers 🙂 Tim NDh1RNs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes1 -
Tool to bulk check outbound links
Hi. I have a list of 50 domains I need to check for links to three different sites. Does anybody know an easy way to do this? The best solution I have found so far is to crawl each with Screaming Frog and search for the domains, but I can only do one at a time this way. Some way to speed it up would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Local and Organic Listings
Hi, My client has a number of stores across the country (UK) and ideally I would like them to appear in both the local and organic listings - at the moment I appear more often than not on page one for one or the other - I have noticed however that some pages appear in both. I understand that Google will not place a listing for the same page in both local and organic so I need to optimise a page on the site for organic and point my local listing to a different page (home page?). On some results though I am seeing my local result appearing with the home page URL listed but the actual link points to the internal store page which is the same page that is appearing in the organic listing (both on page one). Other local listings of mine appear with the store page URL showing in the result. I haven't set anything up differently for these stores. Can anyone explain why this is happening? Thanks, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
How to increase the page rank for keyword for entire site
sorry for my bad english is there any way to increase the ranking for a keyword for the entire site .i know that seo is done per page basis .my site contains 1000ds of posts and i cant get back links for each and every post .so i picked 4 keywords which are mostly used while searching my products , is there any method i can increase my ranking for those keywords like increasing domain authority EXAMPLE :like if i want to increase my ranking for "buy laptop" .if any user searches In google with buy laptop i want my site or any of related pages that match the user search query must show up in front
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prakash.moturu0 -
When you provide traffic estimates, do you factor in CTR?
There are several studies that show CTR based on position. When a client asks for traffic estimates do you multiply CTR by estimated search volume? Why or why not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0