Losing Traffic From Altavista

[mahlon]

I have not been reading up on any changes that may have been going on in the last few months, so I may have missed something. Our traffic from Altavista for a period of 30 days has gone from 4.74% in Aug/Sept down to .79% for the last 30 days. Is there any explanation for this? Is anyone else seeing the same thing in there logs?

[Shakil]

mahlon,

I may be completely off the mark here, but a number of webmasters I know have been saying similar things.

I have come to the conclusion that LESS people are actually bothering with AV.

so its not your ranking, its the fact NO-one is using AV for search purposes.

Shak

[zeus]

They have made some changes again for about 3 weeks ago, right after the update and you are right the search results are bad again, right after the update was finish it was ok, but then they made some changes again and now it s bad.

zeus

[Brad]

I think AV rotates between two databases which are not identical. I used to disappear every 2 weeks on AV. But shortly after AV rolled out their new look they either introduced a new algo, purged a lot of sites, or both.

I'm seeing the exact opposite, my position and my traffic from AV are getting better than ever.

[rfgdxm1]

>so its not your ranking, its the fact NO-one is using AV for search purposes.

True for my sites, and I have superb AV SERPs.

[4eyes]

Yep - I'm seeing the same

There was a nice jump for a while, peaking at nearly 4% on one of my larger sites, now its down at less than 2%.

[jimbeetle]

AV is still my number 2 but referrals dropping steadily from 6% in October, 5% November and now down to 4% so far in December.

Google climbing (even with PR0) from 0%, 2.5% to now 3.2% though still thousands of referrals behind MSN, a steady 75%.

Jim

[nell]

Overview of one typical e-commerce site of ours 7 months old. (reusable consumer products, price point $15-60)

AV about 1% of referrals.
Miscellaneous total another 2%.
MSN 40-45% of referrals. High sales conversions.
Balance from Google & partners.

65% of sales recieved from above.
20% sales from outside advertsing sources. (cheap ads)
15% sales from repeat buyers.

1200+ pages in PPI program. (MSN)
All other pages via SEO.
Poor ROI using Overture.
Poor ROI using Google adwords.
Nothing with Looksmart.

All available $$ goes into programs that give high sales conversions not just because they generate a lot of traffic. That's why, for now, INK and outside sources get our money.