Search traffic dropping for queries of company name, domain or URL
September 14, 2011 10:25 AM Subscribe
I'm seeing a weird drop in August in search-related traffic to my company's site. What's odd is it is for searches of the company's name, domain name or URL.
I've seen a significant drop in traffic to our homepage in August (both Google and Bing). The strange part is it is for queries involving our company name. So let's say we're Blue Widgets. There's fewer search queries referred for blue widgets and bluewidgets and bluewidgets.com and even the URL being typed into the search box http://bluewidgets.com/. If I run these searches in Google or Bing, we are still in top set of results. There have been no changes to the actual HTML of the homepage.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any explanation search-minded folk can add?
I've seen a significant drop in traffic to our homepage in August (both Google and Bing). The strange part is it is for queries involving our company name. So let's say we're Blue Widgets. There's fewer search queries referred for blue widgets and bluewidgets and bluewidgets.com and even the URL being typed into the search box http://bluewidgets.com/. If I run these searches in Google or Bing, we are still in top set of results. There have been no changes to the actual HTML of the homepage.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any explanation search-minded folk can add?
Significant overlap between the groups "people who need blue widgets" and "people who spend all or part of August on vacation"?
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:37 AM on September 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 10:37 AM on September 14, 2011 [3 favorites]
Do you have some kind of analytical tracking in place for the site? You could look to see if certain key terms are the culprit or if this is a broader drop. Also, you mention that you haven't changed the HTML of the homepage, but have you changed other parts of the site? (Changed other pages, changed other URLs with or without 301 redirects, deleted content or pages, changed PPC, etc.?)
Is your drop specific to branded terms and search or is "blue widgets" product AND brand related, or just product? There are a lot of other factors to consider on this.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:45 AM on September 14, 2011
Is your drop specific to branded terms and search or is "blue widgets" product AND brand related, or just product? There are a lot of other factors to consider on this.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 10:45 AM on September 14, 2011
Have you determined if it's statistically significant or is this just your perception?
posted by Think_Long at 10:45 AM on September 14, 2011
posted by Think_Long at 10:45 AM on September 14, 2011
Response by poster: We're using Google Analytics.
The searches aren't for 'what we do' but our company name, brand and URL.Other keywords are not affected including cases where it is our company name plus one of our customers.
Direct traffic to the site is up. Referred traffic from non-search sources is up.
This is only traffic tracked to our homepage index. Not our overall site/network.
posted by ao4047 at 11:18 AM on September 14, 2011
The searches aren't for 'what we do' but our company name, brand and URL.Other keywords are not affected including cases where it is our company name plus one of our customers.
Direct traffic to the site is up. Referred traffic from non-search sources is up.
This is only traffic tracked to our homepage index. Not our overall site/network.
posted by ao4047 at 11:18 AM on September 14, 2011
Response by poster: It is statistically significant: 76k brand-related queries in the past 60 days (most in August) compared to 140k queries the 60 day period before that.
posted by ao4047 at 11:23 AM on September 14, 2011
posted by ao4047 at 11:23 AM on September 14, 2011
Is it a drop in traffic or is it a drop in search term usage? The two things are different.
So say I run a company called "Widgets" or even a company named "thingamajigs" and we opperate in a similar business space to "Blue Widgets":
Say I want to increase my business. I'm going to increase my spend for paid search. All things considered, while you may be "Blue Widgets", the beauty of search engines and paid search is that I can increase my prominence on a search for you just by paying for it.
While you may have been what someone searches on, they may be enticed to my site instead.
I'm not saying that's it, I just can't tell from your question whether its actual queries or clickthroughs that have dropped.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:28 AM on September 14, 2011
So say I run a company called "Widgets" or even a company named "thingamajigs" and we opperate in a similar business space to "Blue Widgets":
Say I want to increase my business. I'm going to increase my spend for paid search. All things considered, while you may be "Blue Widgets", the beauty of search engines and paid search is that I can increase my prominence on a search for you just by paying for it.
While you may have been what someone searches on, they may be enticed to my site instead.
I'm not saying that's it, I just can't tell from your question whether its actual queries or clickthroughs that have dropped.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:28 AM on September 14, 2011
also - I can increase your search traffic by you clicking here.
But, if you click here, that doesn't happen.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:31 AM on September 14, 2011
But, if you click here, that doesn't happen.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:31 AM on September 14, 2011
Have you checked whether anyone is or has been taking out AdWords (or Bing or Yahoo) under your brand name or similar, and siphoning traffic from you that way? Despite working in advertising, I'm always shocked how many people click on the ad, mistaking it for the first result.
It's basically against AdWords guidelines to take out an ad on someone else's brand, so if that's the case you have some recourse there. Try searching from different ips and not signed in to see how you rank and what ads you see.
posted by lesli212 at 11:38 AM on September 14, 2011
It's basically against AdWords guidelines to take out an ad on someone else's brand, so if that's the case you have some recourse there. Try searching from different ips and not signed in to see how you rank and what ads you see.
posted by lesli212 at 11:38 AM on September 14, 2011
Response by poster: Sorry folks, queries is the wrong phrase to use. This is traffic referred from search engines to our homepage. So not search volume or 'number of queries' - but clicks from search engine results to our homepage.
I'm looking at the AdWords thing but it doesn't look like theres any competitors bidding on our searches - we have AdWords campaigns running that put us at the top of paid placements on search results pages.
posted by ao4047 at 11:43 AM on September 14, 2011
I'm looking at the AdWords thing but it doesn't look like theres any competitors bidding on our searches - we have AdWords campaigns running that put us at the top of paid placements on search results pages.
posted by ao4047 at 11:43 AM on September 14, 2011
For how long have you been tracking this stuff? A lot of people go on vacation in August, so you should really be comparing year-to-year to figure out if there's a real problem, rather than merely month-to-month. Then again, maybe everybody who's curious already knows who you are.
posted by rhizome at 11:51 AM on September 14, 2011
posted by rhizome at 11:51 AM on September 14, 2011
Are you the goto brand for your field, or have you been focused in an awareness phase of a marketing campaign that is no longer in effect? Are there new competitors, or what have your competitors done lately that may get them more press?
I'll agree 140K to 76K seems like a big jump, but it is also a month to month jump. How did you look last year? Did you go from 110K to 60K? Were you at a consistent 140K? How many years of search data do you have?
I'm hinting at something here: would your data benefit from a monthly seasonal adjustment routine? Also, weekly traffic might go well in a control chart to see if this is really an out-of-bounds event.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:52 AM on September 14, 2011
I'll agree 140K to 76K seems like a big jump, but it is also a month to month jump. How did you look last year? Did you go from 110K to 60K? Were you at a consistent 140K? How many years of search data do you have?
I'm hinting at something here: would your data benefit from a monthly seasonal adjustment routine? Also, weekly traffic might go well in a control chart to see if this is really an out-of-bounds event.
posted by Nanukthedog at 11:52 AM on September 14, 2011
Response by poster: We've been tracking stats for 2 years. There is not a trending drop overall last August or this August. This drop is nearly all from company/brand-related search results referring to our homepage.
Traffic from search has been relatively steady (we did have a drop to our overall site in April with the Google Panda update but it didn't affect traffic to the homepage).
I'm going to try and slice to see if maybe traffic is getting diverted to internal pages past the homepage.
posted by ao4047 at 12:01 PM on September 14, 2011
Traffic from search has been relatively steady (we did have a drop to our overall site in April with the Google Panda update but it didn't affect traffic to the homepage).
I'm going to try and slice to see if maybe traffic is getting diverted to internal pages past the homepage.
posted by ao4047 at 12:01 PM on September 14, 2011
If I run these searches in Google or Bing, we are still in top set of results.
A random ideas:
* Going from spot 1 to 2 on the page will dramatically decrease clicks. It's not enough to be in, quote, "the top set".
* your company brand is failing. especially obvious if search queries overall for your brand are declining. Not great news for you or your career, but it's a possibility you mustn't overlook. Maybe someone else is edging up on your trademark in a different area of use and people are searching for that instead.
* personalized search means your search results may be different than another person's. Results are no longer the results for a term, but your results. So you may want to take steps to depersonalize any checks you're doing; different IP address, difference browser you never use, clear cookies and credentials, etc. An employee of a given company is probably more likely to get high results they're looking for than their customers!
* perhaps you're getting more hits to more interesting subpages instead of the landing page you're expecting.
* This could be a sign of Marketing Campaigns Actually Working. If you're overall hits are fine, especially. Part of a good strategy is having more visits from word of mouth and bookmarks. And some fraction of your userbase may be converting from search to bookmarks / memorization.
* Maybe marketing campaigns / product releases / industry news in July were boosting your hits more than usual, and this is a reversion to the mean.
* maybe users who search for your company are virus prone and getting google session hijacked.
posted by pwnguin at 12:25 PM on September 14, 2011
A random ideas:
* Going from spot 1 to 2 on the page will dramatically decrease clicks. It's not enough to be in, quote, "the top set".
* your company brand is failing. especially obvious if search queries overall for your brand are declining. Not great news for you or your career, but it's a possibility you mustn't overlook. Maybe someone else is edging up on your trademark in a different area of use and people are searching for that instead.
* personalized search means your search results may be different than another person's. Results are no longer the results for a term, but your results. So you may want to take steps to depersonalize any checks you're doing; different IP address, difference browser you never use, clear cookies and credentials, etc. An employee of a given company is probably more likely to get high results they're looking for than their customers!
* perhaps you're getting more hits to more interesting subpages instead of the landing page you're expecting.
* This could be a sign of Marketing Campaigns Actually Working. If you're overall hits are fine, especially. Part of a good strategy is having more visits from word of mouth and bookmarks. And some fraction of your userbase may be converting from search to bookmarks / memorization.
* Maybe marketing campaigns / product releases / industry news in July were boosting your hits more than usual, and this is a reversion to the mean.
* maybe users who search for your company are virus prone and getting google session hijacked.
posted by pwnguin at 12:25 PM on September 14, 2011
Direct traffic to the site is up. Referred traffic from non-search sources is up.
They searched your site in previous months and bookmarked it?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:05 PM on September 14, 2011
They searched your site in previous months and bookmarked it?
posted by Sys Rq at 5:05 PM on September 14, 2011
If you're looking at traffic to ONLY the homepage almost certainly an effect of the the new Google Sitelinks. Type in any known brand, and you'll see the sitelinks below the primary domain.
Previously, only high traffic sites experienced this. They've expanded it down to even smaller sites, provided they can determine your search query was intended for your domain ("sony", "sony.com").
People are MUCH more likely to click deeper into the site from the sitelinks if it's delivering a good result (a products or services page, for example).
posted by chrisfromthelc at 8:41 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
Previously, only high traffic sites experienced this. They've expanded it down to even smaller sites, provided they can determine your search query was intended for your domain ("sony", "sony.com").
People are MUCH more likely to click deeper into the site from the sitelinks if it's delivering a good result (a products or services page, for example).
posted by chrisfromthelc at 8:41 PM on September 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by contraption at 10:33 AM on September 14, 2011