Significant drop in organic traffic

[fahad direct]

Significant drop from 500 to 15 in organic traffic by Google analytical today though no drop in number of indexed pages or any issue report in webmaster tool. I added few 301 redirects 2 days before i don't know if it is the reason but couldn't find any specific reason why my organic traffic dropped all of sudden today.

[tedster]

You need to analyze deeper than traffic numbers, then. Look into which keyword/URL combinations lost traffic.

[maximillianos]

Maybe a technical problem with the server?

[fahad direct]

Do you mean Google server? Mine is fine and no issues as CPC and other resources brought me traffic quite fine as usual.

[fahad direct]

I have noticed my pages are still indexed but top keywords which were bringing me traffic have been moved much far away from 1st and 2nd pages of Google in the search results.

Is there any issue to do redirects my "No record found pages" without any redirection code 301 simply by javascript? The reason is that i don't want to permanently move those indexed URLs by 301s. Can it cause me this issue?

[steerpikegg]

Did you make any structural changes or add a lot of content in the last couple of days?

If not, it sounds like a typical penalty to me - did you drop your hat over the weekend by any chance?

[fahad direct]

NO i haven't.

[Planet13]

Is there any issue to do redirects my "No record found pages" without any redirection code 301 simply by javascript?

Just so I understand, you are doing javascript redirects for pages that are not found or have no content?

I don't think you should be doing javascript redirects.

If the page doesn't exist, then it should have a 301 redirect.

But if it is a directory and you don't have any listings / records in a category yet, so there is little original text on there, but you plan to add text / listings later, then you should do a meta noindex in the head of the page until you add content to it.

The reason is that i don't want to permanently move those indexed URLs by 301s. Can it cause me this issue?

You can do 302 (temporary) redirects in the meantime, I believe. But as I said above, if it is a directory, and you will be adding content later, then do a meta noindex instead.

[fahad direct]

Thanks very informative. Do you think it is the reason why I have losed traffic in last 4 days from 500 organic hits to under 50?

[fahad direct]

It might be a "honeymoon" period with Google?

[Planet13]

It might be a "honeymoon" period with Google?

How long has your site been active for? I think the honeymoon period only lasts for a couple of weeks after a site is made.

Is your site a directory?

Are most of the categories empty (do they not have any listings in them yet)?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

If you're showing affiliate offers or ebay items etc in the sidebar of your site remove it and see what happens 2 weeks later.

[fahad direct]

It might be due to the offers lightbox appearing on page load on most of my landing pages?

[fahad direct]

Still no improvement in traffic.

[tedster]

Is there any issue to do redirects my "No record found pages" without any redirection code 301 simply by javascript?

You might be on to something here. Are you returning a 404 status for those requests?

[fahad direct]

No 404 status, I have redirectd them with 302 redirects.

[tedster]

Are any of those URLs indexed by Google? Is googlebot even requesting them, even if they are not indexed?

[fahad direct]

Yes 700,000+ URLs indexed in google.co.uk as it is UK based site and being crawled on regular basis quite fine and no any down in indexed pages but it seems keywords have been de-ranked by some unknown reasons.

[tedster]

I mean are any of those 302 redirected URLs indexed or even requested by googlebot.

[fahad direct]

Yes they are.

[tedster]

Then you do have a problem. Maybe it's not THE problem, but you should change the way you're handling those requests so that "no results" pages aren't crawled or indexed.

[brinked]

You mentioned honeymoon period. Is your site relatively new? How established is your website?

Google sometimes likes to give an initial boost with new websites to see how they perform. Do not let this set back stop you from pursuing your business. If you put a quality product out there it will not go un-noticed.