SERPS UP but traffic down

[MustardDan]

Thought i'd try and gain some general feelings for this. But i have a site, which has recently seen a good rise in the Google SERPS.

We're back to a position we used to hold a good year ago. However, we're actually seeing traffic drop - we know what these positions should bring, but it's no where near old traffic levels.

There's a lot of stuff going on at the moment (world cup / market conditions etc), but i just wondered if anyone else was seeing drops in traffic levels, but yet a rise or hold onto good SERPS?

[MustardDan]

It's traffic to keywords and we've also confirmed that what positions we see on screen is confirmed in webmaster tools query stats

[graywolf]

So is the traffic to the page up or down? Is the increase/decrease coming from another site or search engine?

[MustardDan]

Traffic from keyphrases to site is down from google

[graywolf]

No that's not what I'm asking, I'm asking is traffic to the page as a whole, all kwds and all referrals up or down

[MustardDan]

I can see what you are getting at, but That's not the topic of this thread though . Other traffic is up & down based on many many factors such as promotional work etc from lots of off & on line work

What I'm trying to gauge here is the performance of SERPS relative to last year and factoring as many variables as we know etc

[alahamdan]

Interesting Post!

Guys, it's not the World Cup, the economy or Virgen Maria. It's the new Google! Those block of Adwords ads at the top of search results are killing your traffic.

I have to say, that i have a web site which is in Arabic (Less Adwords Usage, Less Advertisers and less lock of Adwords ads, rarely show) and i never faced such a problem your talking about.

So yes looks like the layout and Adwords ads block , have something to do with this!

[piatkow]

On some searches the number one organic result can still end up below the fold.

Of course the other risk is that people are just less interested in your product and aren't searching.

[Lorel]

...and most non-webmasters I talk to are completely unaware that the top results are paid for. They think only the right column contains paid ads

I was hoping that when the news came out that BP was ranking so high for it's preferred terms because it was paying for advertising, that this would inform more people re Adwords, but looks like it hasn't had much effect. Maybe if more web designers blog about this in non-web designer forums it will help.

[cabbie]

I see the same thing as the OP for a lot of sites.
My theory is that google up to just recently have been using a lot of bots to create false traffic.these bots are sophisticated enough to click on results and adwords.
They did this to fool everybody about their market share and of course to increase their revenue.
Those bots are idle at the moment because they know I am on to them.

[quiet_man]

Those block of Adwords ads at the top of search results are killing your traffic.

I wish! Has anyone with good organic positions AND adwords for the same keywords done any cross-checking on whether this trend affects both sources?

We have a PPC site that we try to keep in top 3 adwords spots, clicks in June 2010 are 33% down on June 2009 (impressions down just 6%).

This seems to be the same trend as the OP's organic traffic - position on page is same, but traffic is down. As impressions are not changed too much, this points to the layout changes / universal search results causing users to click somewhere other than top organic AND top adwords spots. Those in-SERPs video results, image results, news results etc can be very distracting, not to mention the related searches suggestions and left-hand column options.

[Victor1]

A friend of mine was doing a search on my computer and when he clicked the #1 result (an ad) he had no idea - he thought it was a search result. So I believe a lot of people haven't noticed those top 3 results are advertising. Hence the drops in traffic.

I hope Yahoo makes a comeback...

[cien]

Yahoo has the same ad setup as well as Bing I think. At the top of the search results. It should be illegal for Google to do that. That's anti-competitive them being the biggest search engine and all. The money doesn't go to a charitable organization but to Google's coffer. It's a matter of when they get sued.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Is Google listening? If Google is using our sites to generate revenue for themselves, which they are, they should also be accountable to us for how they provide their service (and monetize it at our expense). Are they?

[Mark_A]

Is Google listening? If Google is using our sites to generate revenue for themselves, which they are, they should also be accountable to us for how they provide their service (and monetize it at our expense). Are they?

I don't think google have ever really considered webmasters as their target customer group. Users are customers of a sort, advertisers are customers of a sort but webmasters and their content are more like a resource to be used.

[tedster]

If Google is using our sites to generate revenue for themselves, which they are...

That's every search engine - and it always was. Google and the others are accountable in just one way. Tell them to remove your site from the index and they will. Other than that, they have absolutely NO responsibility to send us traffic or to treat our content in any particular way.

And as much as it hurts to lose Google traffic, I don't even want to see further accountability pushed on any search engine.

[lokesh]

Check your top SERP have good volume or you have long tail serp

[rise2it]

It is not what most SEO's want to hear, but it is my opinion that checking serps rank is a useless stat now a days. And this was done I believe by design by G. Which is actually a really good design, causing folks to focus more on what they can control, their own sites, and less on what they can't control.

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I agree with that statement in theory, except that focusing more of what they can control (cough cough) would be Adwords.