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Pageviews drop dramatically in 1 day. Any Ideas?

by 99ishvr4
13 replies
Earnings from my website have been on the decline since May so I started looking into the analytics. I noticed something strange right around May 8th. A huge drop in pageviews from 15,000/week to about 8,000/week. Also my bounce rate increased drastically on the same day from about 30% to 65%. The pages/visit went from 3.5 to less than 2. There was no sudden changes in the overall visitors to the site however, that metric has remained steady.

My earnings are about half of what they were in April so I would like to figure out what happened, especially since it wasn't gradual, it was completely sudden. I cannot remember any changes I made to the website and the last major content I added to the site was in December of 2014.

Any ideas on what happened?

Here are some analytics showing the event.


#day #dramatically #drop #ideas #pageviews
  • Profile picture of the author yragcom1
    Maybe you dropped in the SERPs. Since the content hasn't changed, that might be one thing. Are you using a cache plugin to speed up your page response? Google gets tough about that as well, and can drop your SERP rankings because of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author airallineed
    Maybe you got hit by Mobilegeddon...the rollout was on 21 April but it is possible that you were hit. Is your site mobile optimized?
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  • Profile picture of the author HarrieB
    Write more engaging content on your website.
    See which post is getting maximum interaction these days and write similar topic content.
    is your site mobile friendly?
    Yes, there is a good chance that your site lost rankings for some keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert999
    Originally Posted by 99ishvr4 View Post

    Earnings from my website have been on the decline since May so I started looking into the analytics. I noticed something strange right around May 8th. A huge drop in pageviews from 15,000/week to about 8,000/week. Also my bounce rate increased drastically on the same day from about 30% to 65%. The pages/visit went from 3.5 to less than 2. There was no sudden changes in the overall visitors to the site however, that metric has remained steady.

    My earnings are about half of what they were in April so I would like to figure out what happened, especially since it wasn't gradual, it was completely sudden. I cannot remember any changes I made to the website and the last major content I added to the site was in December of 2014.

    Any ideas on what happened?

    Here are some analytics showing the event.


    If your organic traffic is decreased it means that something went wrong with Search engine rankings. There may be many reasons for that. Latest google update is hitting websites that are not responsive. If your website is not responsive then this may be the issue of ranking loss. You can recover it by making a responsive design.

    Other reasons may be:
    duplicate content or link spamming.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
    Only very high level analysis is possible with the limited metrics you have provided, but it's obvious that your earnings have not been affected by anything that the search engines may have done.

    First, the # of daily sessions has remained consistent. That pretty much rules out any external (i.e. search engine impact like ranking position) impact. You're getting a consistent (and comparable) number of visitors.

    The average number of pageviews per visitor is approximately halved, and that correlates very well with the fact that your bounce rate has doubled (bounces contribute only 1 pageview per session thereby reducing the average pageviews per visitor). That (the bounce rate) is your immediate problem and could become a long term problem if not corrected very soon.

    You should focus your investigation on more specific indicators.

    For instance, certain browsers now detect potential malware, and will give the visitor an error message. Can you correlate the level of bounces to the use of a specific browser? or to desktop vs. mobile? Note - mobile usage is certainly on the rise, but unless 50% of your traffic is coming from mobile that won't account for the drastic change in bounce rate.

    Are the bounces occurring from one or two specific pages? Is there a certain page/pages that might have gone missing from your site, or that have broken links to other internal pages?

    If the bounce rate is not corrected pretty quickly, your search engine traffic will be affected, as Google does use bounce rate as one factor in determining search engine positioning. I'm surprised that hasn't already had an impact, but given the consistency in your daily visitor rate it appears you still have a little time.
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    • Profile picture of the author Devilfish168
      Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

      Only very high level analysis is possible with the limited metrics you have provided, but it's obvious that your earnings have not been affected by anything that the search engines may have done.

      First, the # of daily sessions has remained consistent. That pretty much rules out any external (i.e. search engine impact like ranking position) impact. You're getting a consistent (and comparable) number of visitors.

      The average number of pageviews per visitor is approximately halved, and that correlates very well with the fact that your bounce rate has doubled (bounces contribute only 1 pageview per session thereby reducing the average pageviews per visitor). That (the bounce rate) is your immediate problem and could become a long term problem if not corrected very soon.

      You should focus your investigation on more specific indicators.

      For instance, certain browsers now detect potential malware, and will give the visitor an error message. Can you correlate the level of bounces to the use of a specific browser? or to desktop vs. mobile? Note - mobile usage is certainly on the rise, but unless 50% of your traffic is coming from mobile that won't account for the drastic change in bounce rate.

      Are the bounces occurring from one or two specific pages? Is there a certain page/pages that might have gone missing from your site, or that have broken links to other internal pages?

      If the bounce rate is not corrected pretty quickly, your search engine traffic will be affected, as Google does use bounce rate as one factor in determining search engine positioning. I'm surprised that hasn't already had an impact, but given the consistency in your daily visitor rate it appears you still have a little time.
      one thing I need to clarify about Bounce rate?

      If always post your site content link in FB groups will attract high bounce rate?
      Since people just click and view the page/post.

      rather stay on your site
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      • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
        It depends...

        Originally Posted by Devilfish168 View Post

        If always post your site content link in FB groups will attract high bounce rate?
        Since people just click and view the page/post.

        rather stay on your site
        All your link on FB can do is get people to your site. It's your job to keep them there, or get them to click through to your offer. That's true of any advertising venue.

        Different FB groups have been set up for different purposes, so the members of various groups have different reasons for being a member of any particular group. If your purpose is to advertise to that group, then of course you would only join groups where you feel that advertising might be effective (reaches the right target market).

        Your post in that group is not much different than an Adwords ad in this respect, and unless you have a compelling reason for those visitors to stay on your site... they won't.
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        • Profile picture of the author Devilfish168
          Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

          It depends...



          All your link on FB can do is get people to your site. It's your job to keep them there, or get them to click through to your offer. That's true of any advertising venue.

          Different FB groups have been set up for different purposes, so the members of various groups have different reasons for being a member of any particular group. If your purpose is to advertise to that group, then of course you would only join groups where you feel that advertising might be effective (reaches the right target market).

          Your post in that group is not much different than an Adwords ad in this respect, and unless you have a compelling reason for those visitors to stay on your site... they won't.
          hmm good explanation so summary in fact it will not harm the site 's bounce by posting in targeting groups right.
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    • Profile picture of the author yragcom1
      Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

      Are the bounces occurring from one or two specific pages? Is there a certain page/pages that might have gone missing from your site, or that have broken links to other internal pages?

      If the bounce rate is not corrected pretty quickly, your search engine traffic will be affected, as Google does use bounce rate as one factor in determining search engine positioning. I'm surprised that hasn't already had an impact, but given the consistency in your daily visitor rate it appears you still have a little time.
      That's why I was questioning the caching on the site. It may be that people aren't hanging arond long enough because your site is too slow. Did you add something to the site at that time to make it slow down?
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      • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
        Originally Posted by yragcom1 View Post

        That's why I was questioning the caching on the site. It may be that people aren't hanging arond long enough because your site is too slow. Did you add something to the site at that time to make it slow down?
        My site does have very long articles with lots of pictures so the pageload time is not very fast, I just checked it and average load time is 3.34 seconds. I recently removed some non-essential sidebar stuff from the site to get it to load a little faster.

        I have considered breaking up the articles into more pages thinking that it would increase pageviews and hopefully make my site load faster.
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    • Profile picture of the author eeeasyas12345
      Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

      Only very high level analysis is possible with the limited metrics you have provided, but it's obvious that your earnings have not been affected by anything that the search engines may have done.

      First, the # of daily sessions has remained consistent. That pretty much rules out any external (i.e. search engine impact like ranking position) impact. You're getting a consistent (and comparable) number of visitors.

      The average number of pageviews per visitor is approximately halved, and that correlates very well with the fact that your bounce rate has doubled (bounces contribute only 1 pageview per session thereby reducing the average pageviews per visitor). That (the bounce rate) is your immediate problem and could become a long term problem if not corrected very soon.

      You should focus your investigation on more specific indicators.

      For instance, certain browsers now detect potential malware, and will give the visitor an error message. Can you correlate the level of bounces to the use of a specific browser? or to desktop vs. mobile? Note - mobile usage is certainly on the rise, but unless 50% of your traffic is coming from mobile that won't account for the drastic change in bounce rate.

      Are the bounces occurring from one or two specific pages? Is there a certain page/pages that might have gone missing from your site, or that have broken links to other internal pages?

      If the bounce rate is not corrected pretty quickly, your search engine traffic will be affected, as Google does use bounce rate as one factor in determining search engine positioning. I'm surprised that hasn't already had an impact, but given the consistency in your daily visitor rate it appears you still have a little time.
      Very informative, that is why I love Warrior forums, there are so many knowledgeable people on here that know what they are talking about.
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    • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
      I don't believe it has to do with google penalizing me because the amount of visitors has remained relatively the same.

      I assume it has to be something on my site that is causing it. I do not add content very frequently, so I was thinking that maybe the drop had to do with the lack of new content. However, it seems weird for that to happen across the board in a 2 day time period. No matter what the landing page on my website or where the traffic comes from, the average is around 2 pageviews/session.

      My site does have a mobile version and more than 50% of the visits to my site are on mobile devices, mostly iphones and ipads. I thought this was the culprit at first because the desktop version of my site has a sidebar with a link to each of my articles and the mobile version does not, you can only scroll from article to article without knowing what the next article will be. I do plan to fix this but I don't think this is the culprit either because desktop visits to my site are no better, around 2 pageviews/session, and the desktop version is very easy to navigate to each article.


      Originally Posted by Sid Hale View Post

      Only very high level analysis is possible with the limited metrics you have provided, but it's obvious that your earnings have not been affected by anything that the search engines may have done.

      First, the # of daily sessions has remained consistent. That pretty much rules out any external (i.e. search engine impact like ranking position) impact. You're getting a consistent (and comparable) number of visitors.

      The average number of pageviews per visitor is approximately halved, and that correlates very well with the fact that your bounce rate has doubled (bounces contribute only 1 pageview per session thereby reducing the average pageviews per visitor). That (the bounce rate) is your immediate problem and could become a long term problem if not corrected very soon.

      You should focus your investigation on more specific indicators.

      For instance, certain browsers now detect potential malware, and will give the visitor an error message. Can you correlate the level of bounces to the use of a specific browser? or to desktop vs. mobile? Note - mobile usage is certainly on the rise, but unless 50% of your traffic is coming from mobile that won't account for the drastic change in bounce rate.

      Are the bounces occurring from one or two specific pages? Is there a certain page/pages that might have gone missing from your site, or that have broken links to other internal pages?

      If the bounce rate is not corrected pretty quickly, your search engine traffic will be affected, as Google does use bounce rate as one factor in determining search engine positioning. I'm surprised that hasn't already had an impact, but given the consistency in your daily visitor rate it appears you still have a little time.

      I agree with you that it is an internal problem and does not have to do with google.
      The issue is consistent across all browsers and it does not matter where the traffic came from. I have clicked through all of my links none of the internal site links were broken, there were a few broken external links which I fixed but that wouldn't matter.


      I just looked up the pageviews/session for the past 2 years and I noticed that it has actually been on the decline the entire time. It was around 6 in late 2013 and now I am down to 2. I am thinking that maybe I need to re-organize my website. Currently I have about 26 articles on the site and they are all listed on the side bar in no specific order. I'm thinking maybe I have too many articles over there without proper organization and when people see it, it just looks like too much to go through. Also my website design is very outdated. Are people more likely to stay on the site if it has a more modern feel?



      Thank you for and everyone for all of your help.
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  • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
    I did a little digging, went through my browser history for may and saw that I did make changes to the website on May 8th, but nothing that I would think would drop my pageviews. One change was updating my Addthis social buttons html. The previous one I was using wasn't displaying properly. The other thing I did was add an Amazon Astore on a separate page and added a menu at the top of the site that linked to the page as well as some other pages.

    I realized this 3 days ago and I removed Add this and the menu from the site so the Astore would no longer be accessible. However my pageviews and bounce rate were not affected.

    Any ideas?
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