The past few years have been pretty good for Google. Its ad business is booming and it’s seeing massive usage from mobile users, which should be a boon to its bottom line. But a recent ad-tech blog, Syncapse, points out that traffic to Google’s ad network is down by 7% since the beginning of the year. In general, the blog points out, Google’s traffic numbers are actually trending up, but this is a big drop. What could be the cause?
As Google nears its 20 th year, it’s no secret that it’s got one of the most powerful brands in the world. Google has provided free tools that enable millions of people to search the world’s information, manage their email, read the news, and organize their digital lives. However, traffic to Google’s websites has dropped by 26% since 2012, which Google attributes to “more competition, changing consumer behaviors, and other issues.”
Google offers site owners seven suggestions for determining the root causes of organic search traffic declines.
The primary causes of reductions in search traffic are mentioned in an essay produced by Google’s Daniel Waisberg:
- Errors that prohibit Google from crawling, indexing, or displaying your pages to users are known as technical difficulties.
- Security concerns: Google may warn users before they access sites that pose a security risk, thus reducing search traffic.
- Manual Actions: If a site does not follow Google’s criteria, any or all of its pages, or the entire site, may be removed from Google Search results.
- Algorithmic changes: Google Search results may vary as a result of core updates and other minor adjustments.
- Changes in user behavior might affect the demand for specific queries, whether as a result of a new trend or seasonality throughout the year.
Here are some basic Google Analytics samples of how each of these decreases may appear:
Continue reading to learn how Google determines the source of a traffic dip.
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How to Recognize a Decrease in Google Search Traffic
The main graphic in Google’s Search Console Performance report is the best method to comprehend what happened to a site’s traffic, according to Google.
Starting with the shape of the line, you can get some information. Use these three tips to delve deeper into the data:
- Increase the date range to 16 months: This will allow you to put the traffic drop into context and ensure that it isn’t a yearly occurrence.
- When comparing the drop period to a similar time, consider the following: This will assist you in determining what has changed. Determine whether the impact is due to specific searches, URLs, nations, devices, or search results.
- Examine each type of search separately: This will help you figure out if the drop you noticed was due to a problem with web search, Google Images, or the Video or News tab.
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Waisberg suggests checking at Google Trends to see if the drop is part of a bigger trend or if it is unique to your website.
This may assist in excluding the following two factors as possible reasons of traffic declines:
- People may begin searching for alternative queries or utilizing their devices for various reasons as a result of a search interest disruption. There may be a decline in traffic if fewer individuals are searching for the queries you rank for.
- Seasonality: Food-related queries, for example, are particularly seasonal, according to Google Trends: consumers look for diets in January, turkey in November, and champagne in December. Seasonality varies depending on the industry.
Here are two more techniques to obtain insight into your search traffic while still in Google Trends:
- Examine the most popular inquiries in your area and compare them to the ones that are driving visitors to your site. If you notice that you’re not getting traffic from certain queries despite having information on the topic, ensure sure it’s being crawled and indexed.
- Examine queries that are relevant to key subjects. This may reveal emerging relevant inquiries, allowing you to optimize for them before their popularity grows.
See Google’s complete article for additional information.
