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Does Changing Ownership or Template of Site Cause Traffic Change?

by mikelmraz
7 replies
I was tracking this site and it seems that a change in ownership or template caused the traffic to drop tremendously. Though I'm not sure what caused the traffic drop, but what are your experiences?
#change #changing #ownership #site #template #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author hustlinsmoke
    My experience is when you change the site yes traffic will change after a while. Change of ownership I would not think would affect it if every other variable was constant.
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    • Profile picture of the author mikelmraz
      Originally Posted by hustlinsmoke View Post

      My experience is when you change the site yes traffic will change after a while. Change of ownership I would not think would affect it if every other variable was constant.
      Do you mean change the template, CMS or something similar?
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeannie Crabtree
    Yes, I have changed a theme on a wordpress site and then lost a lot of traffic, as the index and many of the posts went off the first page listings I had.

    It has been a while but as I recall this also happened with an html site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Successjess
    Hi my friend,

    Ownership CAN change the flow of traffic, because it's base off of the traffic methods that the present owner is using! They key to successfully switching ownership; if the website is doing go or ok is to proceed with the methods already being used; also the buyer must do thorough research on all the stats of the website before he or she buys!
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    An ownership change can help, if a site was previously blocked from Google's index.

    If the change of ownership made traffic go down, then maybe the previous owner deceived you about the level of traffic the site had previously, or all of the previous traffic was paid traffic.
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    Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
    Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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    • Profile picture of the author mikelmraz
      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      An ownership change can help, if a site was previously blocked from Google's index.

      If the change of ownership made traffic go down, then maybe the previous owner deceived you about the level of traffic the site had previously, or all of the previous traffic was paid traffic.
      The traffic was verified Google Analytics to be mostly from the search engines. Which is what has intrigued me the most. Still not sure what exactly caused the site to have a drastic drop in traffic (something like 90%).
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      • Profile picture of the author tpw
        Originally Posted by mikelmraz View Post

        The traffic was verified Google Analytics to be mostly from the search engines. Which is what has intrigued me the most. Still not sure what exactly caused the site to have a drastic drop in traffic (something like 90%).

        There are many potential answers to this question. For example:

        * Algorithm change;
        * New template is not showing Google what it wants from the site anymore;
        * At least 3 competitors moved above you in the search results, based on what they did and you did not do (the difference in traffic from #3 to #4 is often times dramatic);
        * Sites that link to yours were somehow damaged in Google's algorithm update;
        * Sites that link to yours are no longer trusted by Google;
        * Previous links pointing to your site no longer exist;
        * A previously redirected domain no longer points at your site.

        The interesting thing about the last two items is that the person you bought the site from could have taken down the links that gave your site value, after you bought the domain.

        I hate to keep coming back to this, but there are some pretty clever scams afoot in the domain selling market.

        One trick is to use a 301 redirect on a site that has a lot of link juice and to redirect it to a site someone is trying to sell. The redirect will pass the link juice to the receiving domain. After the domain is sold, they can change the 301 redirect to the new site that they are prepping for sale, thus leaving the first site without link juice and rankings.
        Signature
        Bill Platt, Oklahoma USA, PlattPublishing.com
        Publish Coloring Books for Profit (WSOTD 7-30-2015)
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