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.
Should Google Trends Match Organic Traffic to My Site?
-
When looking at Google Trends and my Organic Traffic (using GA) as percentages of their total yearly values I have a correlation of .47. This correlation doesn't seem right when you consider that Google Trends (which is showing relative search traffic data) should match up pretty strongly to your Organic Traffic.
Any thoughts on what might be going on? Why isn't Google Trends correlating with Organic Traffic? Shouldn't they be pulling from the same data set?
Thanks,
Jacob
-
Google's trends are for all searches happening for that keyword.
Unless you're the only website relevant for that keywords, odds are you're not going to even remotely match up to what Google says is " trending ".
Even for your brand name, when you search you don't just get your website, you get your facebook, youtube, BBB an anything else, even if others have a company named something likeminded.
So your website isn't the only thing to get that traffic, you'd get the majority of the traffic, so it's possible that the trends match somewhat but highly doubtful you'd match up even in the 90% range.
Another way to look at it is, Google is giving you a idea of how many people searched for a keyword, problem is, everyone doesn't use the same keywords to get the same results. This is even true with brand names, if you have a two word brand name, people might search with it all as one word, or mispells it, even butchers the name but still gets to the results. In that case you didn't see there trend data unless you looked it up, so thats some extra numbers your way.
It's more of a guide for you to gauge how popular a keyword is and high likely it is that people will be searching for that keyword. It's not really meant to be used as concrete data for organic traffic comparisons. That's what benchmarks and historical data is good for.
Hope my long winded explanation helped some.
-
I don't really understand what you're saying. Maybe I should have mentioned that the main term I'm looking up in Google Trends is our brand name and that we show up #1, and #3 for that term. We have for more than a year. So if Google Trends see's that, that specific keyword is increasing in search volume over the year, shouldn't we see similar trends with traffic coming from that keyword?
-
OMG! No!
If you would have earned #1 position from the beginning of Google, that would have been your best opportunity to have organic traffic that matched what you see in Google Trends. HOWEVER, Google has become, a better webmaster, more concerned about meeting shareholder expectations, and has begun modifying the format of the search results pages to keep you on their search pages for more page views, display more ads, display more ads at the top of the SERPs, increase shopping results income, make more money. So, if the #1 organic position, would have remained at the tippy-top of the SERPs for all of those years, then your traffic graph might be similar to Google trends. Instead, the reality is that your traffic graph would have shown either a much steeper decline or much less dramatic growth.
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
-
If website users don't accept GDPR cookie consent, does that prevent GA-GTM from tracking pageviews and any traffic from that user that would cause significant traffic decreases?
I've been doing a lot research on GDPR impact and implementation with GTM-GA for clients, but it's been 12 months since GDPR has gone live I haven't found anything on how GA traffic has been impacted if users don't accept cookie consent. However, I'm personally seeing GA accounts taking huge losses in traffic since implementing GDPR cookie solutions (because GTM/GA tags aren't firing until cookies are accepted). Is it common for websites to see significant decreases in traffic due to too many users not accepting cookie consent? Are there alternative solutions to avoid traffic loss like that and still maintain GDPR compliance? It seems to me that the industry underestimated how many people won't accept cookie consent. Most of the documentation and articles around GDPR's start (May 2018) didn't foresee or cover that aspect properly, everything seems to be technically focused with the assumption that if implemented properly most people would accept cookie consent, but I'm personally not seeing that trend and it's destroying GA data (lost traffic, minimal source attribution, inaccurate behavior data, etc). Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Kickboard2 -
Paid traffic or "Paid Search" is not showing in my Google Analytics
Hi, I have two campaigns running in Google Adwords or Google Ads now and I saw in Google Ads account that I had 5 clicks today (09/18/2018) but when I try to search for this clicks in my Google Analytics in ACQUISITION > All Traffic > Channels I don't find nothing about "Paid Search" or something like that. Bellow is a picture of my Google Analytics account to prove it. The accounts are linked and I can find the 2 campaigns in the Analytics. How can I interpret this picture? Where the paid traffic is showing? or not showing there? Thanks Leandro uvAtrsg
Reporting & Analytics | | lmoraes0 -
How to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view?
Hi, Need help on how to exclude traffic for a specific mobile device in Google Analytics view. I have been searching and the only information available is excluding IP address of internal traffic. Is there any way to exclude traffic through a mobile MAC address?
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadija_K0 -
Tasks for Google Analytics training
Hi Mozzers, I'm delivering some Google Analytics (Fundamentals level) training, and trying to make it was fun and as interesting as possible... which is quite a challenge when it comes to GA. I was just wondering if you're aware of training tasks, or interactions, I could bring into this kind of training session? The group are particularly interested in user journeys and the effectiveness of content. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Q0 -
Google Analytics - Organic Search Traffic & Queries -What caused the huge difference?
Our website traffic dropped a little bit during the last month, but it's getting better now, almost the same with previous period. But our conversion rate dropped by 50% for the last three weeks. What could cause this huge drop in conversion rate? In Google Analytics, I compared the Organic Search Traffic with previous period, the result is similar. But the Search Engine Optimization ->Queries shows that the clicks for last month is almost zero. What could be the cause of this huge differnce? e9sJNwD.png k4M8Fa5.png
Reporting & Analytics | | joony0 -
Can you track two Google Analytics Accounts on one site?
If you have a site that had an old analytics account and then implemented a new one is it possible to run tracking code that records to both accounts without causing your site or data issues? We are doing this so we don't loose data at any point - ideally it wouldn't have been split between the two but making one redundant isn't an option. Ideally we would have merged the data from both accounts and had one - however the research we have done points to this not being a possibility - unless one of you guys knows different? It would be great if anyone has experience on any this.. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisAllbones0 -
How can I track my rankings on Google Images?
I noticed a small amount of traffic coming from a particular very generic keyword. Being pleasantly surprised that we are ranking for this, and after some digging, I found that we are actually ranking in Google images, rather than in the web results. How can I track whether other keywords are ranking in Google images? I use Rank Checker to track keywords in the main web results, but this doesn't have a function for Google Images. Help please - thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd0 -
Organic Traffic From...Mountain View, CA?
I've noticed something a little odd in my organic search traffic lately. Looking at several websites that target the Minneapolis area, I'm seeing some organic searches come in (typically using head keywords - no geo-modifier) from Mountain View, CA. There's no way we are truly ranking well on these terms in California, so it certainly feels like Google sniffing around. I was worried that perhaps they were checking into penalizing us or something, but we've actually seen upticks in search traffic lately. This traffic is not showing up in Google Analytics, just Adobe SiteCatalyst. In the past, spikes from random locations were probably some sort of crawler, like the preview bot, but these are coming in as searches with (for now) keyword data. Has anyone else seen anything like this?
Reporting & Analytics | | SarahLK0