Non-Converting Zombie Traffic 2017 Insights

[glakes]

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System: The following 9 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4847200.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 9:23 am on May 11, 2017 (utc -5)

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Again traffic is less but signups and conversions are super. How could this be?

same thing is happening to me. My organic traffic is about 40% lower than before but my conversions about 50% higher than before.

Sounds like you both were released from Google's zombie traffic pattern. Historically, the release for me would occur during major Google updates and only last a day or two at most. This month I have also seen a release from zombie traffic three out of the last seven days. It's been a long time where I have not been continually inundated with daily poor quality/high quantity traffic from Google. Possibly Google is testing and rolling back multiple times, I'm not sure as the search results remain steady and heavily favored to driving maximum traffic to Amazon (product searches). We will see how long things keep bouncing around and where it will settle at.

Read more about zombies at: [webmasterworld.com...]

[ionguy]

@westcoast same here; posted about this at previous page; drop in traffic since sunday
till today my traffic is very low but no changes for main keywords so, i think something with longtail

[Shaddows]

Further to @glakes, same raw conversions from half the traffic just means Google stopped sending you a bunch of mismatched traffic.

If your raw conversions (not the rate) have gone up, then Google has probably got a better handle on your site.

If you are really lucky, your traffic will trend upwards towards your old level while keeping your new conversion rate. I used to see this pattern repeatedly when I had zombies from 2010 onwards- it was a period of extremely rapid expansion for us.

I am mostly interested in zombies because I truly believe the mechanism that caused this provides a massive insight into the workings of the algo. Here's my thread from October 2010, before anyone coined the term Zombie to cover on/off mismatched traffic [webmasterworld.com...] (as you can see, I was lucky in that my zombies were incremental)

[mosxu]

Mismatched traffic is not really what zombies are, the zombies bounce rate is not that low to be called mismatched traffic, only that from 2010 zombies got a lot smarter.

For any site growing fast question is what is the conversion rate for first time visitors?

[glakes]

I used the term zombies loosely in my post above and apply it to traffic that does not interact with a website. In ecommerce, what some deem as mismatched traffic that does not convert is partially the result of Amazon's domain crowding in the serps - Google giving Amazon 2, 3 or even 4 times the opportunity to siphon off converting traffic -vs- the small business with one listing in the search query. It's next to impossible to compete for buyers in that scenario, between both Amazon's brand recognition and multiplied visibility, leaving what's leftover as mostly those doing product research. Bing and Yahoo generate serps that are much more diverse, with less domain crowding, which makes it easier to compete one on one against the big boys. I've also witnessed domain crowding in information queries, though to what degree this impacts user interaction with an information website is likely limited for those that rely on clicks, signups or other events that do not require direct payment from end users.

I am of the belief that if Google stopped or at least greatly reduced Amazon's domain crowding, many of us would see less "zombies" and come to the realization that mismatched traffic is not mismatched at all. What is currently mismatched is our ability to compete against so many stacked organic Amazon listings in Google's search results for product related queries.

[aristotle]

I would bet that almost all sites get a lot of mis-matched traffic. But not all of it is google's fault. Many people don't know how to search properly and use misleading or ambiguous search terms. They also click on results that are a poor match for what they really want.

Of course Google contributes to the problem by changing page titles and descriptions. Google's algorithm can also identify many of the people who know what they want and are ready to buy, and shows them different results that favor certain ads and sites.

People who operate ecommerce sites are probably more likely to notice mis-matched traffic, but informational sites get plenty of it too.

[mosxu]

Half of the sales go to the top 3 serving ads, amazon conversion rate is at 14% and 70% for prime customers if we round them up we can approximate 30% of sales going to amazon, the top ranking organic result will also pocket 5-10% of the sales.

What is left in sales 15-20% that you still have left after is being trashed by the above anyway. The problem here is that sales/converting traffic disappears under the above scenario and 70% of left competitors still get traffic when it should stop. This is the mystery once you bought you pack up and go no more price comparisons to mismatch our traffic.

[glakes]

Half of the sales go to the top 3 serving ads, amazon conversion rate is at 14% and 70% for prime customers if we round them up we can approximate 30% of sales going to amazon, the top ranking organic result will also pocket 5-10% of the sales.

What is left in sales 15-20% that you still have left after is being trashed by the above anyway.

Your numbers sound about right to me. The remaining non-Amazon sites within the serps only get a small amount of the total remaining converting traffic distributed to them, making the bulk of the traffic Google is sending appear zombie-like. Consider too that just over half the people searching for products go directly to Amazon first, leaving what is left from Google after the domain crowding as very thin and mostly people doing product research (including price comparisons as you noted).

I currently rank good in all the search engines and sell on Amazon too. When Google started Amazon crowding our primary keywords, I saw a substantial dip in sales. It got much worse when the long tail started getting crowded by Amazon listings too. It's not as if I am ranking for the wrong search queries in Google, it's just that Amazon typically has a 2:1 or 3:1 domain crowding advantage in exposure (query dependent) as compared to everyone else. Amazon does not benefit from domain crowding nearly as much in Bing and Yahoo, which would help explain why converting traffic from them greatly outperforms Google.

My guess is when Google does major updates, and Amazon's domain crowding is temporarily suppressed, I see a rush of sales coming in from Google. This rush in sales will last one or two days at most. When I get a rush in sales on my website from Google, I see my sales from Amazon drop during that brief period. The shift in sales patterns appears to come from mostly the long tail as during major updates Amazon does not lose much, if any, domain crowding on my primary buyer keywords. But this month is a mystery to me. Having a few good days of converting traffic from Google is odd.

[mosxu]

@glakes

I see less z guys in organic but a lot more in adwards

[aristotle]

mosxu -- What if somebody comes to your site wanting to buy something that you don't sell. Would you call that a zombie, or would you call it mis-matched traffic?

[masterjoe]

Zombie traffic, as we all agreed on in the past is where traffic numbers and ranking stays relatively stable (paid and organic), but has huge discrepencies in the conversion rates. Myself and a few other members occasionally reported instances where we would receive surges of sales happening at around the same time... zombie traffic has become worse ever since the "fred" algo started rolling, even though it hasn't hit my rankings on my main money site. The sites it did hit were still useful and more relevant than the garbage they are ranking now (parasites, obvious pbns on $1 hosting).

Once again have stopped running adwords ads. In febraury, it was working fairly consistently, and now it is pure garbage... if I'm lucky, my money won't be going into some random sink hole. That's not good enough for me -- if they want business, they need a product that delivers results. And so far, they have proven themselves to be the biggest greed machine on Earth.

Also, I don't think it is always to do with Amazon getting less benefits in the SERPs... many of the products I sell are not available on Amazon. This is not good for the searcher nor themselves. By promoting them at the top of the serps people are now more likely than ever to just go straight there... and I haven't seen an Amazon paid listing for months.

[mosxu]

Aristotle,

You are making a fair point I expect a good ecommerce site with well optimizied landing pages and best prices to convert 4-10% and that would be every day and almost every hour with some spikes in conversions maybe in the evenings especially from tablets.

But you cannot go without a conversion for a day. That means that I have not even been allowed to eat from the 15-20% trash

[glakes]

You are making a fair point

It's only applicable if you suddenly can no longer be found for your relevant buyer keywords in Google, which would leave all remaining traffic in question. If your primary buyer keywords don't return your site in Google, then and only then would mismatched traffic have the potential to become a significant percentage of total Google traffic and explain few to no conversions. Since nobody is reporting a major loss in ranks for their main keywords (most rank well), mismatched traffic is a non-issue. Before all this went down in 9/2015, over half my traffic/conversions came from less than a dozen keywords. I still rank for those keywords, so what's different? More Amazon crowding, yes. Possibly heavier personalization/even more Amazon crowding on the long tail? A most definite yes.

many of the products I sell are not available on Amazon.

That was my case as well. So instead of Google ranking my products, they were ranking far less relevant Amazon category pages. Check your long tails to see if this may be happening to you. Once I put my products on Amazon, it did not take long for Google to replace the Amazon category pages with my Amazon product pages. In the case of Amazon, if you can't beat em then join em.

[mosxu]

yes, very much so no loss of ranks or less spent, traffic is coming similar numbers but it goes the day without a conversion

[aristotle]

glakes -- In your last post you seem to be saying that your site gets very little mis-matched traffic. What about people who visit your site and then leave without buying anything. Do you mean it's well-matched traffic even when they don't buy anything?

[glakes]

@aristotle

Yes, the traffic is well matched based on the subject matter. In my case, it is my belief that buyers have been siphoned off to Amazon which has enjoyed an enormous domain crowding advantage that has grown even worse over the last year. What is left are users interested in the products who either are not ready to purchase (performing research) or those price shopping. Some of the behavior supports this as well, such as users leaving a product page and spending a significant amount of time on the terms page where they can compare my return policy to that of Amazon. I also see people spend a lot of time on our contact page, presumably because they want to see where the products will ship from and how long it will take them to receive them as compared to Amazon (whether a Prime member or not).

As I've said before, most buyers are not starting their product search at Google. The story "Amazon is the First Place Most Online Shoppers Visit" at [cnbc.com...] describes the trend. This leaves far less buying traffic to go around in Google, and many of the buyers are captured by Amazon - no thanks to the domain crowding Google has blessed them with. This is why some of us see zombies, IMO, and the trend of buyers going directly to Amazon will accelerate (2015-2016 was a 17% increase) leaving more smaller ecommerce websites experiencing zombie traffic in the future.

Every website gets some mismatched traffic. But the vast majority of people complaining about zombie traffic have not lost substantial ranks for their primary keywords. A major loss in ranks, for main keywords, would have to occur for obscure and low traffic mismatched traffic to rise to the top and have any relevance. What's happening in my case, is that far fewer buyers are going to Google in the first place and those that do are presented with Amazon's 2:1, 3:1 and even 4:1 (rare) advantage over mine and other sites. During Google updates Amazon's crowding does get relaxed some, mostly on the long tail, which is why I see spikes in sales coming from Google lasting 1-2 days. Once Google stabilizes and returns Amazon crowded queries, website sales drop off from Google. I'm confident this is why I have zombie traffic, but may not be the same for others. Amazon does get the biggest domain crowding advantage from Google, but to a smaller degree other big brands do as well.

[aristotle]

glakes -- Thanks for your reply. But I'm still a little confused. If I understand your last post, a large majority of your google traffic consists of:

1. a few buyers

2. people comparing prices

3. people doing product research

But I had the impression that on most days the majority of your google traffic is zombies. So how do they fit in?

Also, I agree with your statement that google's algorithm identifies and siphons off most of the likely buyers. But I think it must do this by showing different ads and search results to those likely buyers. Therefore the rankings that you see in your test searches probably don't tell the whole story, and could even be misleading.

[mosxu]

@glakes

Let me tell you your contribution to this forum has been tremendous you see fan boys are trying really hard to discredit your findings. They might have a direct brain computer interface with AI. Who knows?

Your post is spot on, just if I am may add the price comparisons you mentioned only apply to the remaining 15-20% of the traffic that we call trash.

There is no way that amazon prime customers participate in price comparisons nor do emailed marketed users form big brands.

But do you know what? The good news is that because of how singularity works even aristotle and nick and even editorialguy will become your fans.

[mosxu]

@aristotle

Adwards does not have targeting strategy "likely buyers" is there something in beta for the last 10 years 70% of advertisers did not know about?

[aristotle]

mosxu - I don't use adwords, but I've seen others talk about it here. You can find the information by doing a google search for "Adwords Enhanced CPC"

[mosxu]

Everybody uses enhanced CPC, it does not find likely buyers, also display has something called in market "users ready to buy" again no effect for accounts under a quota

[glakes]

@ aristotle

But I'm still a little confused.

Maybe I'm confused as to why you are confused? An ecommerce website exists for the primary purpose of selling goods. People looking solely for information, or merely price shopping, does not pay the bills. Therefore, that traffic is non-productive, does not serve the site's primary intent and ultimately is of no value to the site owner who does not have a secondary form of monetization enabled (ads). We could call it the Amazon effect that is causing many brick and mortar stores to close, only that my problem is exacerbated by Google giving Amazon a rather large anti-competitive advantage in the serps.

Also, I agree with your statement that google's algorithm identifies and siphons off most of the likely buyers. But I think it must do this by showing different ads and search results to those likely buyers. Therefore the rankings that you see in your test searches probably don't tell the whole story, and could even be misleading.

Personalization, which I liken to cloaking, does impact Google's search results and buying traffic. There's no way to pin down to 100% accuracy how the search results will look for every user, but we have dedicated servers, friends, family, business associates, proxies, etc. and can see the search results through their eyes. For example, when I search for liquid propane heater I see two Amazon listings about midway in the page. There's three near the top with a proxy and Google moves them to the bottom when a friend searches using the same term. The entire front page is dominated by big brands, though Amazon has a leg up in that competitive query. Another query, 3d printer, has Amazon bouncing around the top with only one listing, with another site having the bottom four listings regardless of which IP or browser is used. I wanted to use that last example to highlight that while Amazon benefits the most from domain crowding, on rare occasions I run into other sites that do as well.

You are quite correct that my searches don't reveal the full story, but it is quite clear that domain crowding does restrict entry into Google's visible search results. Visible search results meaning the results that will be most viewed by users or in my case buyers.

@mosxu

Let me tell you your contribution to this forum has been tremendous you see fan boys are trying really hard to discredit your findings.

Thanks for your kind words and your contributions to the forum as well. As far as being discredited, I really wish someone would and offer a solution far easier to accomplish then removing domain crowding from the serps. Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen as I also don't believe Google will ease up on the crowding either. If anything, Google will press forward and introduce crowding into more long tail queries.

[mosxu]

@glakes

I understand your concern I do not think the crowding is the problem we have listings on top organic and also ads at the top and still get lots of zombies.

It is about timing amazon and top brands conversion rates are almost instant nobody is looking who reviewed amazon or if their price would be a bit more and what is left after the buyers are thrown to these sharks is not much if you know what I mean.

[glakes]

I understand your concern I do not think the crowding is the problem we have listings on top organic and also ads at the top and still get lots of zombies.

When I check my ranks from my computer, I'm #1 for a top keyword. Checking from other sources, I'm buried underneath multiple Amazon listings for the same query. Personalization, or as I refer to it as cloaking, is present. Google's motivation for showing me great ranks, while everyone else sees something different, appears intentional and must be since that is how it is when I checked from multiple other IPs and browsers. I'm not sure how much your ranks vary when searching from different IPs, browsers, etc., but mine vary enough that Amazon is nearly always elevated above my site. Not just one Amazon listing but the entire crowded group moves together in harmony.

Regarding Adwords, I think a lot of people are blind to the ads, while others block them. I have not seen a text ad in a long time in Google, and my guess it's because Kaspersky is set to block them. With the bulk of high buyer intent users going directly to Amazon, I don't think Adwords could ever give the same bang for the buck as it once did anyway which contributes to the poor ROI/zombies in Adwords we see.

Zombies are not the result of just one thing but a perfect storm dropping hail on our heads. We have the really hot buyers going directly to Amazon and spending right away. Some of the leftovers go to Google and in my case are presented with Google's Amazon crowded serps. If the same trend of buyer migration from Google to Amazon holds true, sometime later this year 70% of shoppers will begin their search at Amazon. Meaning, there might not even be enough leftover high intent buyers in Google to bother wasting much time trying to directly reach. Reaching users in Google, well before they are ready to purchase, will likely be the key to extracting the most value out of search altogether.

[Shaddows]

Reaching users in Google, well before they are ready to purchase, will likely be the key to extracting the most value out of search altogether.

Absolutely. But that's just a Brand strategy by another name!

We've quantified the Amazon impact in our niche, and have basically abandoned any efforts at a price strategy and anything else that AMZN does well (though we still have UGC product reviews). We do things Amazon are unable to do, because they don't scale. And we trade on the fact that we are not Amazon, which is a big factor in the B2B world.