A switch from Search to Direct traffic from Feb 2012
-
I have read about the Google algorithm updates galore in 2012. I would therefore be inclined to suspect a sudden sharp drop in Search traffic this year to be caused by such updates. However, I am seeing what appears to be a direct switch from 'Search' to 'Direct' traffic as of about February 16th this year.
There are no specific brand-building exercises or general advertising campaigns happening around this time for the site in question. It seems very UN-explainable?
I wondered if there are any thoughts from the various lurking gurus? I have attached GA screenshot..
-
for sure, all the best
-
It looks as though the site lost most of its LongTail traffic... Feb 1st-15th showing 131 different keyterms and Feb 16th-28th showing just 35. At the same time the traffic from branded search terms reduced significantly across the many variations.
For the mentioned time periods, Direct Traffic was virtually double in the second period.
With the drop in search/longtail and the perfectly coinciding jump in direct traffic, as a whole the site traffic remained roughly on trend. Very strange! It has remained this way ever since.
Thanks for the advice - Keyword analysis suggests some work could be done to re-introduce what has been lost there. As for that coinciding Direct traffic jump... I need to dig into that some more to fathom it. Wish me luck.
-
Do some keyword analysis. Drill down in the analytics reports and review the keyword data to see any trends. Also take a look at where the traffic is coming from (Geo target). We had a similar situation where the direct traffic spiked for a client and it was because the development team was based in that location and they were accessing the site a lot. If that is the case you can filter that traffic using the IP's.
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
-
Impressions clicks and traffic drop
Hello,
Reporting & Analytics | | SharonEKG
So something weird is going on, i run a few websites for clients, few different CMS. there has been a constant increase in traffic and ranking on one wordpress website and now the squarespace website is climbing up in rankings in the past few months. both has GTM installed for months, which has been optimized regularly.
for the wordpress website, in the past 2 weeks, starting June 4th, on google search console the clicks and impressions has started going down to the point that i lost 90% of clicks and impressions and traffic on analytics has started dropping a few days later, now at about 60% less traffic. for the Squarespace website, exactly the same thing, started June 7th and drop in clicks/impressions (though ranking increase) and then traffic drop. checked both GTM for recent changes incase of wrong code implement, no changes, no new major issues.
different hostings different CMS, no link between them. i just cant put my finger what is going on. anyone got any idea what is going on?0 -
How to Diagnose "Crawled - Currently Not Indexed" in Google Search Console
The new Google Search Console gives a ton of information about which pages were excluded and why, but one that I'm struggling with is "crawled - currently not indexed". I have some clients that have fallen into this pit and I've identified one reason why it's occurring on some of them - they have multiple websites covering the same information (local businesses) - but others I'm completely flummoxed. Does anyone have any experience figuring this one out?
Reporting & Analytics | | brettmandoes2 -
How can I distinguish new visitors from existing (customers) in Google Analytics to attain an avg # of new visitor traffic per day/week?
i do marketing for a business software site where we have hundreds of clients and each account has on avg 100 users. I am having a very challenging time to attempting to figure out the real number of unique traffic that our site receives. **(what's creating the issue is that we have thousands of user accounts where our users log-in via our site to access our app/platform). Would love help with this! Christian
Reporting & Analytics | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
When my new website went live I saw a huge spike in traffic for 3 weeks but then it halved again. Why would this happen?
My new website went live on 13th April and the organic traffic levels increased by 110%, staying at that level for 3 weeks. Then exactly 3 weeks later the organic traffic halved again, going back to the same level as the old site. Has anyone seen this happen before or worked out why?! Thanks Viki P2R76O9
Reporting & Analytics | | TWB0 -
Changes to cookies, August 24 or 25? (organic search not being cookied?)
Hi folks. We've seen a precipitous change in the referral data that we're able to gather from cookies. Specifically: On August 24 or 25, traffic to our site that was cookied as coming from organic search dropped by ~25%, and traffic coming in with no referrer data at all (i.e., it appears to be "direct") rose by roughly the same amount. As far as we can see, we haven't changed anything in our systems that would have caused this (we're not just mis-reading the cookie info), so I'm looking for external reasons. Has anyone else seen this? Or have any ideas why it would happen?
Reporting & Analytics | | RobM4160 -
How to Configure Custom Alerts for Real Time Traffic etc from Google Analytic API?
Hi All, I know how to set alert from google analytic but i want alerts for real time visitors so i think it is possible via Google Analytic API, so can anyone share with me the process or relevant blog post? Regards, Mit
Reporting & Analytics | | mit0 -
Organic Traffic going to Direct? How to find the ultimative proof
Hi there, a few months ago we had a new site launch. As we operate internationally, visitors in different countries do get redirected to the specific country subfolder. e.x. domain.com/it Since site launch. Direct Traffic is performing really really well(almost to good to be true) while organic is doing decent but not more. I'm quite sure, that a part of direct belongs to the organic channel. Though now I need strong arguments to fight against our own web development team. Do you have any suggestions, where and how I can find strong evidence of my hypotheses? Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | ennovators0 -
Direct traffic decline
I've noticed a few of our sites (tour, hotel, and local attraction) which are very established and reasonably high brand recognition that have experienced a significant decrease in branded traffic (-20-30% compared to same period from the previous year) the past few months. There have been no changes in offline marketing though we are seeing a slight decrease in visitor arrivals (-5%) and higher hotel room rates. Is there a chance that Google's not set may be affecting direct traffic numbers? Any other thoughts on how we can figure out why brand traffic is dipping? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | SoulSurfer80