cwnet - 8:42 am on Jan 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks to all for your thoughtfull replies.

Google Trends seems to backup my thoughts of less search activity (at least for my niche).

I tried the top 100 keywords and keyword strings that people use to find my site and roughly 90% are reporting that search volume has declined by roughly 50% over the years.

If this trend continues, Google will become an insignificant source of traffic for my niche within a few years. Not only for my website but for the whole industry I am in (a multi-billion industry I may add).

ogletree: you may have a very good point when saying 'your website is becoming more successful'. If I read this as my website (and others in my niche) have achieved to convert a lot of search visitors into brand visitors and combine it with the information from Google trends, the conclusion is that Google has lost roughly half of their visitors to us. Those that used to search Google to find us and now bypass Google because they know they find what they are looking for on our websites.

Am I hallucinating? Is anybody seeing the same?