Sudden increase in returning visitors
-
Hi,
in the last couple of days I've seen the following changes in my analytics:
-
about 35% increase in overall traffic(both organic and ppc)
-
new visitors dropped about 20%(both organic and ppc)
-
bounce rate increased in about 10%(both organic and ppc)
I haven't done any changes to the analytics code nor any other big change to the website.
I'm obviously pleased with the increase in traffic but worried about the fact that it is mostly from returning visitors.
I just want to make sure that nothing went bad so I can catch this on time, any advice on what to look for would be great.Thanks,
Asaf
-
-
right now I am using "absolutely unique visitors" as my gauge. Not perfect, but it will have to do.
-
right now I am using "absolutely unique visitors" as my gauge. Not perfect, but it will have to do.
-
I think they have a huge issue with sessions now.
based on people's comments, the change seems to be rather big and renders the results almost useless. I guess if It's going to stay that way I should learn how to read the new results.
-
Yes.. this would have been nice. However I believe they think there is little to no change. I use Joomla on the site that has problems and I am curious if Joomla's sessions are conflicting... I went from 90% new visits to 70% visits. Now I use a calculator to see what my old traffic was.
From what I can see, with some users it is counting each page view as a visit. If someone comes to my site searching like "how to build a red widget" and I see 15 visits. I know there is not 15 people that search this term. Rather the sessions are screwy. Not sure if this is a Google fix, or something on my part yet.
-
well it is a change: http://analytics.blogspot.com/
apparently on 11/8 Google has changed they way they close sessions.
and I'm way out of they're 1% change - "this change may slightly increase the number of visits"
they could have sent a simple mail.........
-
I am experiencing it too... it looks like GA changed how they look at sessions. This is the problem I assume. It is really throwing off my numbers. I am curious if it is a CMS thing.
-
Usually I don't have a lot of traffic
Organic search was
a couple of days ago(very much average)
39 visits - 76.92% new visits - 20.51% bounce rate
today (till now):
72 visits - 50.00% new visits - 62.50% bounce rate
-
How much traffic do you have? Could it just be a large fluctuation?
-
It's an adult novelty store,
and there is currently a valentines day like event here but the keywords that bring in the traffic are also not directly related to this event and the fact that the bounce rate has increased on these terms alerted me.
but maybe I should wait a couple of days and see
-
What is the topic of your site? Are there any real-world events going on related to your site that could explain this change in traffic?
Are there any seasonal factors for your site? Any sales or discounts? Is your site in any way related to "back to school" activities?
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
-
Sudden drop in traffic since website redesign – can't spot double firing sessions pre-update
Hi all, We launched an updated website around mid-April and have seen a long-term drop in unique page views and sessions since then. Between 25-35%. Page views returned to normal within a month, however. In terms of acquisition, we've not lost referrals or direct traffic, just organic sessions. I haven't seen any significant Google updates except for 'Fred' but that was in March (pre-website update). We did have to do some 301s and fix up an HTML and XML sitemap, etc, post launch – but that's been in place for a while now so shouldn't still have such an effect? We are also struggling with load speed at the moment, working on this at the moment. Didn't think this had a such a significant impact on ranking however. We've lost mostly non-UK traffic, especially USA. We're actually climbing rankings for a lot of new keywords I'm targeting, so I can't see how our SEO has been hampered. Frustratingly, I wasn't using Search Console or Moz Pro before this update, so can't compare much in the way of keyword traffic (I know I feel very silly now). I don't know if it's a reporting issue (I wish it was). I mean we had both GTM and GA tags on the website (I didn't know this until I looked into it) but these were present post website-launch. And I haven't found enough double firing sessions or page views to suggest we used to be getting double figures anyway. Before this, we were ranking brilliantly and getting more organic traffic than ever. All the best,
Reporting & Analytics | | landport0 -
Increase in Direct traffic, drop in Google traffic, after updating Google Analytics settings.
I made some changes to our Google Analytics property settings (see notes in screenshot). As a result, there was an equal drop in Google traffic and increase in Direct traffic. Has anyone else seen something like this before? I'm wondering if I should revert. jE7buO6
Reporting & Analytics | | vcj0 -
Why would page views per visitor suddenly increase?
My website traffic is growing by about 1% a week. It has a fairly stable page views/visitor of about 1.69. There's normally very little variability in this As we sell an industrial product. Today page views jumped by 50% and so did page views/visitor but visitor numbers stayed the same. I dont have a useful hypothesis to explain this. Analytics shows me that the traffic source, country of origin and pages viewed are pretty much the same as normal. There's been no substantive change to the site (today we changed the text in a widget to link to a new page - and no one visited it). It doesn't look like 1 person has gone through the whole site as that would skew the distribution of page views by country So why would user behavour suddenly change? I'll look at it for the rest of the week but in 7 years of looking after this website I haven't seen anything like this before.
Reporting & Analytics | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Google Analytics - how do you find out Unique Visitors ?
Hi Im trying to find out unique visitors per annum in GA, is this possible, is it simply users ? i know they changed definitions recently cheers dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Visitor Hours
Just a quickie.... I know that this was possible in the previous incarnation of Google Analytics, but I cant fathom how to do to it now on the most recent version. How can I see when the mos popular visitor times were on my website? I.e. a graph that shows a 24 hour clock over any given time frame
Reporting & Analytics | | DHS_SH0 -
Google Making all searches secure - "Not provided" data to increase in Analytics
A lot of you might already be aware of the recent Google change at encrypting all search activity except for clicks on ads. Rand did a whiteboard session on this recently. How is everyone planning to adjust their research data to accommodate for this change?
Reporting & Analytics | | SEO5Team0 -
Google Analytics Organic Search Keywords Suddenly Displaying FulL Urls
In my Google Analytics, the top keywords for Organic Search are suddenyl displaying full URLs. For example, now the third and fourth keywords are http://www.domain.com/highly-specific-URL. These have all started recently around the same day, July 12th. I've checked back, and we've made no internal changes to the site around that time that could affect this. Any thoughts on this? Thanks! P.S. It might be related to rich snippets, but I cannot tell at this point.
Reporting & Analytics | | 10SL0 -
Is IP tracking of visitor allowed?
Hi, Google Analytics does not provide IP addresss of the visitors. What if i develop some in-house tracking mechanism to do so? Is it allowed or will Google penalize me if it comes to know about it? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | IM_Learner0