Loss of Traffic

[dwedeking]

Has anyone noticed less traffic from Alta Vista? We had a site ranked well before Dec for a targeted keyword and then lost that listing for about 4 to 5 weeks. Now we have that listing back but it doesn't seem that the traffic is the same level. I'm wondering if this is just an isolated quirk or the start of a trend down for Alta Vista.

[WebRookie]

Our AV traffic has gone down slightly per month, not enough to make a big difference yet. Will keep an eye on the AV traffic too.

[seth_wilde]

There seems to be a definite downward trend at AV. They've always had a more tech savy user base and it seems that their loosing some of this core audience to google.

Check out these stats

Sept 18, 2000
AV - #3 SE Overall with a 8.8% market share
Google - #5 SE Overall with a 7.7% market share

Jan 24, 2001
AV - #5 SE Overall with a 5.7% market share
Google - #3 SE Overall with a 13.7% market share

(stats from websnapshot)

[rcjordan]

That's some jump on Google's part. Obviously, the Yahoo deal looks like a coup (that said without knowing what it cost them). Looks like they ate someone else's lunch, too.

[Drastic]

I have also noticed less traffic on a term that has remained somewhat consistent (on the SERP) for a while. It was a slow decrease over the past few months, but seems to be dropping even more lately.

[David]

The goto partnership has to be taking some clicks from the traditional search results.

[Brett_Tabke]

As one who bet the bank on altavista the last two years, I can definately say, YES referrals have gone down enourmously in the last six months. The type of user has also changed. The same ranked page in the same position as one year ago today under the same keywords, is generating 30-32% fewer referrals per week.

[rcjordan]

>The type of user has also changed.

Which way goes the demographic, BT? Any gut calls on that? More tech or more newbie?

Also, I've been wondering if we've reached a saturation point on some SERPS and terms. So many sites are competing for the click now. How do the sites around that same slot stack up now? In some of my markets I'm seeing some strong competitors rise around me (GoTo has been a cause of this, but not in AV), and even though I'm holding the same rank I'm sure that some of the business is siphoned off in the nearby slots.

[Xoc]

I wonder seriously how much difference this review [zdnet.com...] by PC Magazine made a difference. I made major changes on my sites exactly when that issue came out so I can't determine anything from my logs. This article may have caused the influencial people to try Google and switch, then advise their friends to switch. That's what I did.

I find it inconceivable that PC Mag liked Northern Light, though. You search for a company name, and there are 30 listings before the company's main site. Relevancy sucks.

[Boaz]

I have also seen this downwards turn in traffic - that is, until last month. Last month I have actually seen a rise in AV traffic for many of my clients, without any significant improvement in ranking in most cases.
Most of my clients are tech.

As for Northern Light - PC Magazine always had a soft spot for them

Edited by: Boaz

[msgraph]

>As one who bet the bank on altavista the last two years

I wonder if this contributes to some of it.

Until the recent rise in country-originated search engines, Altavista used to be the dominant engine for A LOT of people world-wide. They would use AV.com because of the language-specific search ability, the large DB of world-wide sites, and the translation services.

Now we are starting to see more use of other country-specific search engines powered by FAST, Google, AV, Yahoo, etc. While at the same time having the ability to search for sites that ONLY come from their country of origin.

I don't have any numbers to give you
all but maybe Rencke can dig up something :)

[Air]

Referrals from Av are hitting an all time low for me, still good rankings across a number of sites, but it's as if I can see the tumbleweed blowing around evrytime I go there now.

These stats seem to support that perception:

[websnapshot.mycomputer.com...]

[awoyo]

AV is going through some pretty deep poop right now. This morning I checked on a four word keyword phrase that usually brings in about 74,000 pages. This morning it was down to 26 pages. Twenty Six Pages! And results were not accurate at all. Last month I was happy to find one of our sites made it to the number six position on page one only to realize that while the site name and description were accurate, the URL they were sending visitors to was not ours, but a competitors! Their tech staff has still not come up with a reason for this catastrophe, and has since took the site out of their index.

[rcjordan]

>24 pages

A wild fluctuation in the number "pages found" seems to precede another mood swing for AV.