Website traffic down by 83% in 4 days!

13 replies
  • SEO
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I just checked the stats of my domain in Google analytics, and here are the stats with respect to number of visits:

April 26: 365 (which has been average for a while)
April 27: 147
April 28: 91
April 29: 75
April 30: 60

Any idea what would cause such a huge hit in traffic? It's a Wordpress blog.
#83% #days #traffic #website
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Hlatky
    Yes, by using my psychic powers I am correctly able to predict EXACTLY why your traffic dropped without you providing any information.
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    • Profile picture of the author mikeroosa
      You'll need to analyze further and see where you were getting traffic from before and where it's coming from now. Very probable that your site is bouncing around in the SERP's.
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  • Profile picture of the author BBCMember
    Thanks, mikeroosa. 82.7% of it comes from Google (organic). The drop was caused by Google. Just went deeper into the stats. Would it really go down that fast in 4 days? The site has been up for years, and it has never experienced this kind of drop in traffic. Was wondering what some of the reasons might be for such a drastic drop in traffic from Google for a Wordpress blog.
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    • Profile picture of the author Anna Hussie
      There can be numerous problems and no one can be specific.You could ask Google about this.
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    • Profile picture of the author debra
      Originally Posted by BBCMember View Post

      Thanks, mikeroosa. 82.7% of it comes from Google (organic). The drop was caused by Google. Just went deeper into the stats. Would it really go down that fast in 4 days? The site has been up for years, and it has never experienced this kind of drop in traffic. Was wondering what some of the reasons might be for such a drastic drop in traffic from Google for a Wordpress blog.
      Where was it coming from geographically? The majority of your traffic could have been coming from areas that are not as active as they were a week ago. For example, areas that have been hit hard by the storms.
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  • Profile picture of the author WealthWithin
    Nothing much can be said without you providing much info.
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  • Profile picture of the author Seatbelt99
    Could be many things. Which keywords were you getting most of your traffic from? Are you still getting traffic from it? Check webmaster tools, are you still ranking the same for those keywords?
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  • Profile picture of the author Derek S
    you track where you rank for the keyword bringing in the traffic at all?

    probably lost your rank and it is still slipping. Also could be market fluctuation too and not much you can do about that!
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    OP, did you check your pages/keywords rank in the SERPs?
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    • Profile picture of the author johancades
      Banned
      [DELETED]
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      • Profile picture of the author No1here
        OP, my guess would be that it's one of two things. OK, maybe 1 or 2 of 3 things.

        1. Google may have re-indexed your site and you're no longer ranking as high in the SERPs as you were previously and thus your traffic has dropped off dramatically.

        2. It's possible that Google is re-indexing websites and your site is caught up in the proverbial "Google Dance." Just wait a couple of weeks and see if things eventually clear up and your traffic comes back.

        3. You may have competition from someone who is marketing in the same niche as you. It's not only possible but likely that this person(s) are using automation to build thousands of back-links to their website which resulted in them taking your SERP spot and your site is now ranked lower than the new site that is just blasting out automated back-links.

        What it comes down to is that it doesn't matter if the problem is any of the above. You should be concentrating on building back-links to your site and I would suggest building quality back-links from high PR websites, blogs and BBS forums.

        You can outperform the competition if you start and continue creating quality links back to your website throughout the whole Google Dance or whatever is going on. You can beat automation, if that is the problem, you can still reclaim your Google spot by creating quality back-links from authority and high PR websites by hand.

        If this post was helpful to you then please hit the thanks button. Not sure that it helps but it makes me feel good that my advice and posts are appreciated.
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  • Profile picture of the author nerik
    1 - Which is your primary keywords ranking now ? (If you're splipping down it's normal that your traffic decreases...)

    2 - Did you stop your SEO/web marketing activity? (Never stop!...or your website dieds...)

    3 - Did you stop to provide new content/goods/services from your website that you previosuly used to provide ? (If so, you can say goodbye to your returning visitors...)
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  • Profile picture of the author BBCMember
    Thanks for the help, guys. Helpful info for the future. As it turns out, the reason for the drastic drop in traffic has nothing to do with SEO, marketing, Google, etc. It has to do with me not renewing a domain that I don't use, but that is the domain for my custom name servers which hosts all of my sites! What's weird is that all my sites were still up! I asked the tech guys of my hosting company what caused this, and he mentioned something about the DNS client caching. Anyways, I've renewed that domain and my traffic should be back to normal. I'll monitor it and let you know if it's not.

    Lesson learned: Keep on top of your domain renewals, especially if that domain happens to be the domain used for your custom name servers!

    Thanks again!
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  • Profile picture of the author crismanaon
    You should check Google analytic which keywords provide more traffic, I think your good keyword lost top ten in major search engine.
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