scottsonline - 4:57 am on Apr 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

Tedster I need to lay out some history first. Up until about 2/10 our site was busy. Died slowly through February and march. Zombies. Last few days of march the bounce rate plummeted. Last week traffic referrals and conversions at record levels.

Flip the coin. A close friend in another niche went stone cold quiet saturday. traffic levels time on site and pages are the same as pre saturday. Much like our site in march he is seeing equal statistical traffic but not the same converting traffic.

My thoughts are a threshold is tripped and undefined/uncertain traffic is sent. The tire kickers that google has not been able to get a handle on. The people that dont buy. Maybe google bundles them into buckets thinking "maybe this is the type of site they will like" and that's the push we see as the buckets are moved from site to site. Through the algo theyve been grouped as nomads and are being pushed in the hopes they find that site that'll make them happy.

Well think about it. Which group shops but doesn't "buy?". Competitors, people thinking about a purchase but that are months away from buying, people researching for others etc. When we saw the weird traffic in march there were many 3-5 week time to purchase in that month. A statistical anomaly for us. We also saw much traffic from competitors that thought we were the manufacturer. That all stopped a week ago and conversions went straight up.

What changed? Beats me! But I half think the zombies my friends are seeing are the bucket of malcontents and competitors that google has not yet classified and is testing against sets of sites.