Sudden 60% drop in traffic. Anyone have an idea why?

[jdn909]

Hello BHW,

I have a website that generated an average of 3,200 visitors / day up until September 5th (from direct traffic but mostly referral as I am on the first page of my exact match keyword which has over 200,000 searches per month according to the keyword planner).

That said, from from September 6th, I got a 60% decrease in traffic that has been lasting for over a week now.

I am still on the first page of Google. Can anybody explain why this happened?

Thanks!

 

[irmscher]

Google wants you to use Adwords

 

[YouMadBro]

There was refresh activity on the 4th September. Some people (including me) believe it's a simple Penguin refresh whereas others are mentioning it's an unofficial update geared towards network links such as SAPE. However, lots of innocent sites have been hit since the 24th Auhust due to Google's obsession with what is a "good" link. IMO, it's getting silly these days.

Anyway, you probably have some form of backlinks that are not good in G's eyes. Liike I say, 4th September was a big day and Google usually refreshes updates at the beginning of the month. FWIW, Google hasn't said anything on what happened on the 4th.

 

[tzzoug]

It still doesn't explain how even if he's on the first page, he is getting a lot less traffic coming from Google. If his site got hurt n fell off the 1rst page, i'd understand, but that isn't the case.

 

[lanbo]

Double check to see if any of your keyword rankings have dropped.

 

[335ix]

Hello BHW,

I have a website that generated an average of 3,200 visitors / day up until September 5th (from direct traffic but mostly referral as I am on the first page of my exact match keyword which has over 200,000 searches per month according to the keyword planner).

That said, from from September 6th, I got a 60% decrease in traffic that has been lasting for over a week now.

I am still on the first page of Google. Can anybody explain why this happened?

Thanks!

You've lost your long tail kw traffic ... the same here, still on the top spot for my EMK, but long tail kws dropped a lot

 

[jdn909]

Thanks for all the responses.
In terms of long tail, according to Analytics, my Google traffic was from my main keyword and very little was from long tail.

 

[hostmela]

recently google dropped many site its pengiun updated.

 

[YouMadBro]

It still doesn't explain how even if he's on the first page, he is getting a lot less traffic coming from Google. If his site got hurt n fell off the 1rst page, i'd understand, but that isn't the case.

Oh, I didn't read that last sentence. Mmm, that's interesting then.

OP, post the level of traffic for direct/referral/organic traffic, that'd help the case.

Are you tracking long-tail traffic? If you are in Page 1 for a 200,000 EXACT MATCH keyword you should be getting far more organic traffic than 3200 daily uniques.

 

[SEO_Alchemy]

What's the confusion? For one reason or another you lost out on some rank on some of your keywords. Do you actively monitor the rank of the keywords that bring you traffic? If not, you absolutely must. Doesn't mean you got penalized, just means that you lost some rank. Rankings are dynamic, they do not stay in the same position, google is constantly reshuffling and reevaluating all links and all properties. Some of your links may have been devalued, perhaps your content was devalued, maybe some competitor quite simply outranked you with their own SEO efforts, or googe just decided that this property deserves to rank higher than yours.... endless possibilities of why, with one outcome.

 

[jdn909]

When I check my traffic sources, it tells me that (Not provided) is 70% of my traffic followed by the main keyword (which is the name of my domain name) at 20% and everything else split at 0.66% and lower.

 

[edgematch]

All normal. Google is bringing new updates. try to follow them. And OP, you have fell back on many long tail keywords...

 

[vivalafeva]

yea ive noticed some traffic drops recently. I would just follow your rankings closely for now

 

[moon612]

Google updates there making it tougher on us as marketers.

 

[badrman2]

Come back to earth SoN. all the world know about google update u r the only the one who miss the google party ^^