Still ranking but no visitors - Where is my traffic?

[vivalasvegas]

I have a website that ranks first on a 3 word phrase which had brought about 5,000 unique visitors/day for the past 12 months or so. Starting 10 days ago the traffic from this phrase dramatically dropped to about 200 visitors/day. When searching in Google I am still ranked first. I even used several anonymous browsing websites to test this and each time I search my homepage is the first result. I just don't know what else to try or how to explain this. Any ideas?

[John]

We had this off and one for a couple of years, Google just switches off the traffic and a few days later switched it back on.

I have a screen print of the effect but I don't think I can post it here, pm me if you want a look.

Google obviously serves up different sets of data to different searchers and can switch them around at will because you know there is no difference in your content.

Warning. Eventually this site got turned off pretty well permenantly after going in and out for 2 years.

[vivalasvegas]

I see what you mean, but still can't understand why I see the same ranking using different proxies.

[morehawes]

I see what you mean, but still can't understand why I see the same ranking using different proxies.

Are the proxies you are using located in your country? It may be that they are getting servered the same dataset but a different one to you.

Is there a geographical trend with the visitors you are getting?

[tedster]

Are you checking your rankings at roughly the same time of day each time? If so, then mix it up. And watch the Google IP address that is serving the results, too.

WebmasterTools will show you how ranking positions vary - can be helpful.

[vivalasvegas]

Proxies are not in my country.

WebmasterTools will show you how ranking positions vary - can be helpful.

I did check Webmaster tools and indeed it only shows very few impressions for the #1 position, 2 to 10 and second page, which seems to indicate that for most visitors my website is very down in the SERPS. However, no matter when or where I search my homepage is still there.

[RP_Joe]

There is a great tool for Firefox called "Google global extension"
Its is terrific. Not only can you pick a country you want to see the SERP's for, you can create your own criteria. Say you want to create a profile for a major city in USA, you can specify codes and it will show results as though you we there. I have many for different place of the world. And its free.

[kidder]

Hey Joe, thanks for the tip I just tried that tool in AU and it opened 7 windows for one of our big search terms and we are only on the front page for 2 of them. Interesting because it served 5 pages of funky looking results for AU.... At this stage i'm not sure what to make of it.

[vivalasvegas]

Thanks for this tool Joe, very useful indeed. I tried about 10 US cities (my traffic is 95% US) and everytime I search my website is at #1. This is very awkward. I wonder if someone could steel my traffic somehow.

[Kelowna]

Thanks Joe, this thing works great! I am in Canada and no longer have to deal with proxies to see the USA results. Even the sponsored links show up as the selected city so I know it works! Great Find!

[bwnbwn]

I wonder if someone could steel my traffic somehow.

Since you continue to see your set in the same position using various tools that indeed could be a good possibility.
How is your dns set up?
Are you in control of the dns settings?
What kind of hosing are you doing?
Have you gone over all your files to make sure the server hasn't been hacked?
losing that kind of traffic and remaining as you say in the same positions does smell funny and needs to be looked at as the possible issue.

[morehawes]

Perhaps try running web-sniffer (do a search) for some of your URLs and make sure there aren't any redirects or anything suspect going on.

[netmeg]

LOOK AT YOUR LOG FILES.