wingslevel - 12:47 pm on Apr 2, 2012 (gmt 0)

us ecom. last week we had the lowest average conversion rate on our google referrals since i have been tracking this metric - call it 10 years - the quality of google traffic has never been worse - specifically this was tues-saturday - looking at this traffic hourly, we see the good swings (higher converting) were fewer and farther between - then, yesterday, there was a significant change - our google conversion rate almost doubled since those dark 5 days - we are operating with a sampling of 10s of thousands of visitors, so, i don't think this is any anomaly nor does it have to do with issues with our site - we have a long established conversion rate.

i know it sounds like a copout to say "its not us, its google", but it is - they are sending us garbage referrals because their index is in shambles - particularly the longtails