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Home » The Famous Blog » Traffic Drop? Maybe It’s Not your Fault!

Traffic Drop? Maybe It’s Not your Fault!

January 20, 2011 - Last Modified: January 20, 2011 by Alex Cochrane 5,499

Traffic Drop

So you’ve been tracking your website’s statistics via Google Analytics or another monitoring service, and it’s all been going dandy. When suddenly, you notice your traffic drops. It might be a gradual downward slope or it could be a sudden plummeting. Maybe you had 100 visitors one day and 1 the next. You get worried – what’s going on here? So you start searching Google for an answer. Is this happening to anyone else? What could have gone wrong? Is it something you did? Maybe you ring up your web developer or online marketer and ask what the heck is going on.

Don’t panic. Below are just a few reasons your website might be suffering from decreased traffic. Some of these can be directly rectified by you while others you can’t really do much about:

The tracking code is broken

The first thing you should do is check that your Google Analytics tracking code (or that of any other service you use to measure your traffic statistics) is still present and installed correctly on each page of your website.

Some symptoms of an improperly installed tracking code:

  • Traffic falls suddenly – from a fairly stable number of visitors to 0 per day.
  • Traffic falls and then plateaus over time – this could be an indicator that the tracking code may have been broken on some pages but not others, perhaps accidentally removed while editing the page. Google Analytics continues tracking traffic for the pages that still have the code installed, but cannot track for pages on which the code is not installed correctly. Naturally, the statistics show a lower number of visitors.

There are a couple of different ways to check whether the tracking code is the problem (you can use these in combination to be totally sure):

  • Go through each page of your website individually. View the source code and find the tracking code on each individual page. Make sure it all looks as it should – not truncated, correct ID, etc.
  • Go to your monitoring service and check whether it detects any issues with the tracking code. In Google Analytics this can be done by logging into your account, clicking on the site whose tracking code you want to check, and then clicking “Edit” on the right hand side. From there you will be taken to a page where a “Check Status” link will be visible to check the status of your tracking code. Unfortunately Google Analytics will only check if it is receiving data or not – so unless data is not being received throughout the whole site, you will get a green light from the Analytics status checker.
  • Check what traffic has been like for individual pages on your site. Are any pages that you know would be popular showing no traffic? Check the tracking code on those pages.

A Popular Link to your Site has been Removed or Repositioned

Check your traffic sources for a time period of about a week or two before you noticed a drop in traffic. Note the top five or ten referring websites that brought visitors to your site. Now check your traffic sources for the time period since you’ve noticed the lower traffic. Are any of your top traffic drivers missing or not providing nearly as many visitors? Perhaps another website linked to yours from a prominent location and the link was pushed to a less visible spot. Maybe a popular link was removed altogether. This could be accounting for a drop in traffic.

Seasonal, holiday, and other trends

If you’re finding your traffic sloping downward gradually, it might be due to a seasonal or holiday trend. For example, people tend to browse less during the Christmas holidays – they’re likely out there buying gifts or spending their time with friends and family and this leaves less time to spend on the computer.

Here is a visual example of seasonal fluctuation in user interest when it comes to certain topics or products. We used Google Insights to graph general Australian search volumes for the keyphrase “air conditioning” over the past seven years:

General Australian search volumes for the keyphrase "air conditioning" over the past seven years
General Australian search volumes for the keyphrase "air conditioning" over the past seven years

As you can see, Australian search volumes for this keyphrase peak around the month of January without fail. Interest then drops as we come up to the colder months.

An even more drastic example is worldwide interest for the search term “Christmas gifts”:

Worldwide interest for the search term "Christmas gifts"
Worldwide interest for the search term "Christmas gifts"

Search volumes are understandably the highest each December as people scramble to find Christmas gifts for friends and family.

Funnily enough but not surprisingly, search volumes for the keyword “fitness”, a topic not directly related to a seasonal product like air conditioning or the holidays themselves, also peak each January. This renewed interest is no doubt due to New Year resolutions and people wanting to drop the pounds after the holiday season:

New Year resolutions and people wanting to drop the pounds after the holiday season
New Year resolutions and people wanting to drop the pounds after the holiday season

Sometimes traffic influences are not as obvious as a big holiday or season. A particular event can capture public interest and drive some great traffic to sites covering that event – in turn other topics could be left on the backburner in people’s minds and this can reflect in their browsing habits.

Needless to say, a decreased interest in your topic if it is prone to seasonal fluctuation can mean a decreased amount of traffic not only to your website, but all sites in your industry. All you can do is ride it out until interest in your product rises once more.

Sudden drop in search engine rankings

Whether you actively optimise your website for search engines or not, have a look at your search engine traffic before and after the drop. It’s quite possible that your site is experiencing a drop in rankings. But don’t panic! Often these are only temporary, a reassessment or recalculation of your website’s authority and positioning. Or maybe your position for one very popular and traffic driving keyword has slipped – if a large portion of your visitors came via this search term you could see a visible drop in traffic.

If you discern that your search engine traffic has indeed suffered since the drop, keep an eye on your rankings over the next few weeks. If you know of any potentially dodgy tactics that you think may have raised a red flag with Google, rectify them immediately. If rankings across the board are down for an extended period of time, evaluate your website for anything Google might find suspicious, remove the potentially offending element, and consider submitting a re-evaluation request to Google.

Meanwhile, have a look online to see if you can find any news of an algorithm change that may have impacted the rankings of various sites – not just yours. If other unsuspecting webmasters have suffered the same problem at about the same time, they’re likely to be talking about it on relevant forums, blogs, etc.

Are you missing the pattern?

With most websites tracking their visitors over a longer period of time, a weekly traffic pattern may become visible. A website might always get the most visitors on Monday, for example and the least on Saturday and Sunday (weekends tend to be “slow days” for a lot of websites). Ideally, traffic on a Wednesday should be compared to the previous Wednesday – not yesterday’s Tuesday.

Of course with some websites a weekly traffic pattern isn’t clearly distinguishable, but if you’re worried about day-by-day traffic fluctuations, try comparing set weekdays to each other, not consecutive days.

In conclusion…

These are just some potential reasons for a drop of traffic to your website. If you notice a traffic drop, don’t panic. Check if one of the points above may be the issue and proceed accordingly from there.

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Filed Under: Google, SEO

About Alex Cochrane

Follow @pagebuild

Alex is a Drupal developer and the man behind Pagebuild - a do-it-yourself online website builder that makes it easy and affordable to build your own website.

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{ 78 Responses }

  1. Baju Bola says:
    I've got fluctuation on my web and now i have found the answer after read this post.This post give me complete explanation about several reasons why my web traffic drop. Now, what i need to do is optimize my web better. Thanks Alex for share this information
  2. valer says:
    Really nice post. I am a new blogger and a few days ago I started seeing a drop in the number of visitors and I freaked out. Good think I read this article because I mind find the answer.
  3. Jobin Martin says:
    My blog too has a drop in visitors, so I decided to check out the reason and got this awesome blog post.I hope the traffic will get back to normal soon.Thank you for alleviating my tension!
  4. Robert says:
    Every now and then, the ranking of some of my pages changes quite a lot. One day, I may rank in #4 for a specific keyword and the next day it suddenly falls off to #25 and then, a few days later it comes back to #3 - #6. I have no idea, why this is happening - it even happens on pages where I don't do any active link building.
  5. Tom says:
    In reference to the comment above, Google Insights is a great way to understand whether seasonality is affecting your website traffic.
  6. Pankaj says:
    I have been seeing traffic drop around 30% in last 2 days... will wait for some more time. I checked my site for google penalty and it's clean. It's a tech site with traffic on all the articles, so there is nothing that can see this much drop in a single day. Having my fingers crossed in the hope to return it to normal again.
  7. Dendy says:
    Oops I'm really really confused. Last 7 days visitors of my blog is never less than 300 per day ... and today only 43 visitors. And I think it's very worrying. Besides I check the main keywords of my blog, the position was dropped from Google's page 2 to page 7! Actually this happened exactly since yesterday I installed the Hyper Cache plugin, the plugin seems to make the same bug as w3 total cache I had ever installed and I had wasted previously. But had today almost 12 hours ago, also I have wasted Hyper Cache plugin and my blog visitors has not returned to normal. I'm really worried. I really want to get an answer, if possible, whether the cache plugin if it does not match the server and make a lot of bugs, can lose google ranking which in turn visitors also dropped ... (but which I hope was happening is the recalculations keywords from google, and this is a temporary decline in visitors, hopefully: (( )
  8. Anuj says:
    Everyone points to Google's Panda filter added earlier this year designed to identify sites with poor, unoriginal content, it is apparently fired off once every 4 or 5 weeks. Many article directories have taken a big hit, any reason they would associate your site with marginal quality?
  9. Julia says:
    Well, this means we have to check over our analytic setting before decide our site drop from SE or not. But these days, lot of us experience with traffic drop. since Google panda update for sure. :)
  10. Wim Van der Plaetse says:
    Hi Alex Got the same problem. Since February 2011 my single page urls are not listed in Google anymore. Google only listed my tag-, page- and category-pages. I don't know what I did wrong and I can't find the solution on the web. Maybe you can help me? Kind Regards Wim Van der Plaetse
    • Wim Van der Plaetse says:
      Never mind, I already found out what my problem was :)
  11. Maria Pavel says:
    If my traffic goes down suddenly and it happened many times to me, I check the rankings for the biggest words. Unfortunately, the problem was, most of the times, a drop in Google rankings, not a tracking code not working properly. Maria
  12. Darren Scott Monroe says:
    Once you discover the pattern here are some suggested booster tactics. Develop a weekly series based on the most popular posts you have ever had (their most interest). That way if you know you will have a dip say Thurs - Sunday. OR repourpose your content from your archives and make a weekend TOP 10 for something.
  13. Mani Viswanathan says:
    Yes there are times/seasons when you experience a drop in the traffic. I experienced a traffic drop during the festive season.
  14. Garen says:
    Check with your Webmaster Tools. If you have been duped for aggressive link building or spamming Google will let you know (as well as another common red flags). Newer sites can get duped easier. Also, check to see if you have 404 errors or other crawl errors in Webmaster Tools. I had this a month ago and it killed my rankings in Google. However, once you fix it you usually show up bigger and badder, as a thank you from Google for paying attention. Garen
  15. Jenn says:
    I find that our traffic always drops over the weekend. Interestingly, the traffic we DO get on the weekend converts better than the traffic we get during the week, it seems. So a traffic drop is not always necessarily a bad thing--it's the quality of traffic that matters, not the quantity.
  16. Vijayraj Reddy says:
    ya, once my friend had huge traffic drop, then he realized that most of his posts were seasonal...
  17. bryan says:
    Alex, interesting explanation to this. I don't have any problems with broken GA code.I think what caught me was the stats on fitness which peaked every January but it then soon plateau before jumping up again. And yeah festive season related search peaks, that comes a lot in December like what I noticed while doing my Google Trends Analysis. Personally for me, weekends are slow traffic days, but it will quickly peak up before dipping again. It's pretty much the same trend for the whole year.
  18. Dustin says:
    Yea traffic drops can really make a person get some anxiety and yea those are the main reasons above. I feel most people get freaked out with seasonal traffic. I do too!
  19. Val says:
    Nice article, thank you for bringing up the trends issue. It's definitely something to keep in your mind. A nice quick check when you have a drop in traffic is check the search impressions in Google Webmaster Tools. If there is a drop in impressions without a serious change in your rankings, then maybe it's just a fluctuation in public interest in your topic.
  20. Ann Karen says:
    One tactic here is to continue monitor your blog and don’t make any drastic modifications that may affect SEO and check will happen. In that way, you will be able to see the root cause.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Good idea, it's better to wait and see what happens before doing anything extreme.
  21. Arslan says:
    very informative.... thanks for sharing man.... actually you have given me some good ideas here too....thanks man!
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Glad you found it useful :)
  22. Kunal says:
    Sudden drop of the traffic can be one of the issue you have mentioned. What I liked about this article is you have included almost all the points and mistake one can make. I too did one. When I changed my theme, I forgot to add alexa and google analytic codes to new theme and suddenly noticed my traffic to zero the next day. I realized soon what I was missing and corrected the issue. :)
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Yeah, it's so easy to miss that GA code when changing themes if it's embedded straight in the theme files!
  23. Lucian says:
    I like the one with the analytics code broken. It happened me when I was not using google analytics, I was scaried but then I was very happy that nothing bad happened. This is why I believe that mixed traffic sources is the health of a website.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Yes, it's very important to have multiple traffic sources and not rely on just one.
  24. Tran Tinh says:
    Your post reminds me checking whether tracking code is still in place or not. I usually forgot tracking GA even I change my theme, great post to keep close eye on our road :-)
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Looks like the GA code issue is one of the most common for people, at least based on the comments here :)
  25. Aurelius Tjin says:
    Alex Thanks for sharing this highly informative topics, now i gained addtional info from you since my idea is different about what wrongs when your trafffic counts drop suddenly.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Happy to help :)
  26. Andrew says:
    Yeah, plugins are the bane of my life. Upgrades, bug fixes, new version, etc! TBH, I can't knock them too much as they do make my life far simpler but the Analytics plugin has, periodically, caused me a lot of concern. Just imagine logging into your money and seeing your visits drop from 4,000 per day to ZERO!!! Then, after 10 mins, working out that your Analytics plugin has broken (again). Big sigh of releif, quick fix then back to earning money. Lovely :)
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Ah, that would be scary. But thankfully when it's such a huge drop you can kind of assume that either the tracking code is broken or the website is down (which I guess isn't really very reassuring :) )
  27. Morgan Barnhart says:
    Hey Alex! Wow. Fantastic analysis here! I had never considered a few of these options so it's great to see them. Analytics can be daunting to me, but I know they're an important part of running a business and it's important to realize why there's a drop or increase. Thanks a lot for this!
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Thank you, happy to hear you found the article helpful
  28. Diana says:
    whats a "re-evaluation request to Google"? how do i do it and is it really taken seriously?
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      A re-evaluation request is a form you fill out to ask Google to review your site if you think they penalised your website inaccurately or if you actually found some elements on your website that caused a penalty and now that they are corrected, you'd like Google to basically have another look and see that the problem is now fixed. This includes things like malware problems with your site that have since been fixed. This is kind of like a last-ditch effort when you're suffering from a penalty that isn't getting resolved. You won't have an instant resolution and 99% of the time you won't even get a reply, but it's just one thing you can try that might help: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en&pli=1
  29. Dennis Edell says:
    Another good reason for not getting stat obsessed, they will bounce around like a yo-yo and drive you insane...
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Agreed, sometimes it's just not healthy! :D
  30. Tantan says:
    I think sudden drop in search engine rankings is the most frequent. Since there many sites out there grow everyday.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      I think in a lot of cases you're right, depending on the industry/competition.
  31. Suraj says:
    I totally agree with you man, sometimes there is a drop in traffic with no reason, Great post. Learned so much. Thanks for sharing this article.
  32. Henway says:
    Most of the time though, if there's a traffic drop it's due to the search engine algorithm changing - not due to trends, or a link being removed (hardly anyone gets a majority of their traffic from 1 or 2 links). You shouldn't panic because panic does no good... it's better to find more defensible traffic sources other than the search engines though.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      I must disagree - most of the time even with a search engine ranking drop it's not necessarily due to an algorithm change at all. Most search engine algorithm changes are never even noticed by the general public or webmasters, at least not straight away. It could be due to competition simply getting ahead or your sliding down because of an insufficient or incomplete optimisation strategy. In addition, not all websites rely on or enjoy search engine traffic as their highest traffic source and plenty have that one link or two from extremely popular websites (some of which may or may not have been purchased, of course) that drive most of the traffic. I agree on your point that it's important not to rely on search engine traffic alone.
  33. Rodger says:
    The best advice is to not panic. Exactly. Panicking will get you nothing. You must work to figure out the problem
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Exactly, we often spend too much time worry about something than figuring out how to fix it!
  34. tushar says:
    a blogger should be aware of what his main traffic source is and he needs to constantly work on it.. if, as a blogger, you can not figure out where your majority of the traffic is coming from, you are missing a lot...
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Agreed, and also in addition to working on the main traffic source a blogger should not forget to also work on supplementary traffic sources should something go wrong with their primary source.
  35. Andreas says:
    I urge all my clients in 2011 to get a solid standing in social networks and not rely on traditional SEO and google anymore for the majority of traffic, you will never know when google changes their rankings again and you may end up using most of your traffic if you do not have any other sources.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      I don't think anyone should ever rely on just one source of traffic. Understanding how to utilise social media isn't just great when trying to use social media as a traffic source - it is also important for an SEO campaign itself.
  36. Murlu says:
    I think a lot of people forget about trends a lot of the time; they're so wrapped up in them that they completely forget they wrote a trend piece - months later, when the trend dies out, so does the traffic so it then becomes discouraging. That's the reason you really want to go after those big content pieces at all times (and sparingly use trending pieces to pull people to your pillar posts).
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Yes, and sometimes trends aren't even that obvious in the first place. I think using Google Insights can be a great way to check if something is a trend topic or not.
      • Murlu says:
        For sure, I had a great year covering a topic that was related to a top 100 list that was done by a magazine but once it rolled to the next, my post dropped out of the listings like crazy because of all the new updates for 2011.
  37. Natalie says:
    I need to chill out when it comes to web stats. I start hyperventilating if it drops by ten the following day. Made myself a promise to only check stats once a week. Says her who opened them first thing this morning!
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      I know how you feel, it can get as addictive as email!
  38. Robert Dempsey says:
    Great post title Alex and great points. I see you're a Drupal guy and I use a lot of WordPress. Sometimes we can easily become reliant on the plugins we use to just work, but sometimes they don't or they stop for some reason. Great case for checking your stats on a regular basis.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Glad you liked the article, Robert!
  39. AJ Clarke says:
    I think the "Popular Link" is a big one for a lot of people. One link on a site could mean a huge jump in traffic and once that is removed or the page where the link came from becomes outdated, bye bye traffic. I have noticed that Google has been ranking my blog #1-#5 for my new posts but then the post goes down to the 2nd-3rd page after a few days. This is another thing you may experience, your posts may rank really high but only for short periods of time. So keep track of your rankings as well as traffic, so you can see where the traffic has gone missing.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Exactly, quite often new content will jump up to the top spots because it's new, "fresh", or currently relevant. As the content ages or other content on the topic appears it might begin to slide.
  40. DiTesco says:
    This is super. Really nailed this one down and boy did I wish I had these tips early last year when I did experience a sudden drop in my traffic. On another occasion, I had a different experience due to problems with a web hosting provider. I found out that my"web hosting" provider was having technical issues and "downtime" was just unacceptable. My website and most likely everyone else that was hosted there probably had the same problem. Changed my hosting provider and traffic gradually recovered.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Ah yes, some web hosts can be just horrible with downtime. Thankfully you've found a more reliable host and I'm glad you found the article useful :)
  41. TJ McDowell says:
    To avoid the problem where you accidentally remove the Analytics code from one page, it's best if your Google Analytics is in a template file or a wordpress plugin so it will be included on every page that uses that template file or every wordpress page. Then you won't get stuck going through 100 different pages trying to find which page had the code removed.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      That's a great point, TJ. I think if using Wordpress a plugin for the GA code can really save you a lot of hassle. Many people include their GA code in the theme itself, then change the theme down the line and forget to reinstall the code.
  42. Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach says:
    Hate depending upon Google for traffic. It can kill you at a moment's notice. Trust me, that's the voice of experience speaking... Some year I have to get back into analyzing my traffic keywords - it can really help drive business.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      The search engine giveth and the search engine taketh away :) With a good SEO strategy though you can end up with so many good quality links that even if the actual rankings suffer a drop you're still getting traffic through those referring sites.
  43. Lennart Heleander says:
    Hi Alex, One thing that it can also be, is that you write too stereotype article after article about the same thing and after a time more and less the people don’t come to your blog.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Yup, great point. People can just plain old get bored with your content.
  44. Alex says:
    Hey Alex, Broken codes can really give you an heart attack especially if you have only one method of measuring the traffic from your website. There are a multitude of why you traffic may have a downwards trend from not posting so often, your content started to get "not so useful", you had a sudden peak because of Google dance but now that it's over and your website is back where it was, you wonder what happened to your traffic. The best method to be aware of this sudden drops is to have a great tracking system, one that can record all referrals, search terms and all that. Also, having a way to compare data is yet an other features, of course having a feature that sends you an email when the something bad happens it's definitely the way to go for big websites. But for smaller blogs, having GA and analyzing it's data when you get a drop in traffic it's a very good way to troubleshoot your way out of it.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Google Analytics can actually send alerts via email when something good or bad happens with GA Intelligence Alerts. You can set up an alert when traffic drops below (or above) a certain level, for example.
  45. Justin Germino says:
    If your blog is heavily dependent on search engine traffic then the following definately applies. I had about a 60% traffic drop on my blog in August/September '10 and I was able to attribute this to switching from All in One SEO plugin for Wordpress to a different plugin for SEO, when I restored the All in One SEO plugin my 60% drop reversed and is back up to same levels before the drop. So in addition to the above, be careful when using SEO plugins and deciding to change them up, this can cause a huge impact from search results as well. Also, I was getting about 10k visits per month on one of my smaller blogs for a very specific article or page related to a topic that trended, when the topic was no longer heavily searched for (or other sites started posting and using the same keywords) my traffic tanked. This is one reason why you have to diversify traffic sources and try to keep your 3 levels (direct, referral and search engine) equal as much as possible so you don't rely to heavily on one type of traffic source.
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      Justin, did you ever figure out what All in One SEO plugin was doing specifically that the other plugin wasn't? It'd be very interesting to know.
      • Justin Germino says:
        No, I really couldn't it looked like the META description, META Title and META keywords were all there and working, so it must have been something other than this.
  46. Mike says:
    Yup, I agree with you, Alex. Sometimes, a main factor that makes your traffic drop is because the season has passed and no one is search for that phrase again until next year. This often happens with seasonal keywords like "back to school supply", "world cup", etc. If you accidentally optimize for these keywords, you should understand this. For gurus, seasonal keywords are great chance to double their earnings!
    • Alex Cochrane says:
      You're totally right, Mike. Seasonal keywords don't have to necessarily be a bad thing for professional bloggers or affiliate marketers who know how to take advantage of them. For small business owners in a certain niche however they can be a bit of a problem and source of confusion. Glad you enjoyed the post!

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