Low traffic from google with the same rankings?

Is google traffic going down?

[shahid]

While the ranking for two of my sites is still same at google for their keywords, the traffic from google is going down gradually since june. What could be the reason? Less number of people searching at google?
I want to know if some other website owners are facing the same situation.

[Aaz7]

maybe google just showing your site at few datacenters\regions, but not at all of them. i've saw such things few times, but not for a such long time

[shri]

If you're an amazon associate, you would have noticed that Amazon's "movers and shakers" list, which I presume is driven by alexa stats, reports a drop of 18% in google traffic. Ask Jeeves is up 60 odd percent.

Can anyone confirm if there have been any significant advertising campaigns by any of the major search engines which might cause these sort of shifts?

[metrostang]

Noticed the same thing since June, with the greatest drop this month. Google traffic off about 30% with little change in rankings. No major changes to the site.

[BigDave]

Search the archives. You will find this same thread starting up several times a month for the last three years

To answer your question, no, nothing has happened in the last few months to cause a significant loss of market share to google.

Some factors you might not have considered:

- while your position might be the same, a better selection of sites might be showing up above you.

- are you comparing results of keyphrase to keyphrase? Or are you comparing total traffic and checking the position of a *few* keyphrases. With over 30,000 keyphrases that deliver referrals, I am not able to check all of my keyphrases.

- seasonal shifts.

- different, less appealing snippet.

I do think that some of the other search engines are picking up some traffic, but I think google is gaining traffic faster than they are losing it.

[metrostang]

Your may be correct BigDave, but all of the factors you mentioned have been influencing my traffic since the site has existed. For the past 2 1/2 years my Google traffic has been at worst steady and more often that not increasing. This year and specifically in the past 3 months, Googles share and number of referrals has been decreasing compared with other SEs.

I know that one site doesn't prove anything, much less a trend, but it appears that many others are experiencing the same thing.

I have no doubt that the quality of my competitors sites is one factor and that might not of mattered as much in the past with the numbers of new people going on line each month. I remember reading that the number of new folks going on line each month is not increasing as fast as before. Maybe that's a factor.

My position in the major SEs has remained relatively constant, but traffic generally and specifically from Google has taken a dive.

[BigDave]

but it appears that many others are experiencing the same thing.

Yes, and as I pointed out, they have been experiencing it for as long as I have been reading WW.

And at the same time as all these people are seeing a reduction in referrals, there are a huge number of sites seeing an increase or a fairly steady number of referrals.

For there to be a swift and dramatic change in searching habits, there has to be a known triggering event, and there has been none.

A gradual change on the other hand, is probably happening, but I personally expect that it is still a net gain for google. I know of people that use MSN as their ISP that have changed to using Google to search within the last year. I don't know of anyone that has switched to searching primarily with MSN that does not have an MSN account.

[bumpski]

Since May there has been a significant traffic theft effort that may be ebbing now. A traffic increase promotion. The perpetrator creates many pages for a given website. The pages consist of search engine results pages with the hyperlinks stripped out. Many of these pages are created even for small websites. The file names of the pages are full of keywords purported to be appropriate for the given site, but I think not. The titles of these pages are populated with keywords. Again the pages themselves are copies of search engine results pages. The snippets are verbatim text from other websites (Copyright infringement). What better material to use, loaded with keywords. You've probably stumbled onto these pages yourself. typically the path name will have number in it. Any given page may actually only have one legitimate link to the actual website hosting these hundreds of keyword filled pages. The creators and followers of this mechanism blatantly published there website traffic statistics, up 800%! Well if they're up 800%, where do you think the traffic comes from? I stumbled upon a example of this doing a four keyword search which I guess I shouldn't mention here. The site in question is no longer indexed in Google! I had emailed the site with a complaint and was told the questionable pages would be removed, they're still there. I told this website owner he was at risk of being banned from Google. I also mentioned to him that amazingly the original perpetrator of this scheme had either cloaked or removed all his questionable pages for no apparent reason. Also the site advetising this scheme still exists, but now claims the scheme is under development. It was free before, the profit was the Adsense ads on the dummy SERPS pages. At least one of the perpetrators sites is still indexed. I think Google may have communicated directly to him and his peers that were advocating this traffic theft technique, and strongly recommended they cease and desist. I believe only now are the traffic stealing pages slowly being removed from Google's index. You've seen the pages called Supplemental results, these are unlinked pages. Unfortunately these pages seem to take more than a year to go away. The Googlebot seems to love these hidden (unlinked) pages! So they are still affecting traffic. I wish I could be more specific but I think it would be against this forums policies

[shahid]

I am getting low traffic from the same keywords at google. And the site is not and amazon or any other affiliate.Why i am concerned is because if you get 100 visits from one keyword and then next few months you start getting 70 visits from the same keyword while the ranking is still same. And there are the same one or two sites above which used to be eariler.

[webnewton]

There could be many reasons for this:

1)The nature of product you're selling. There may be a variation in the demand.
2)Seasonal variations for the product.
3)Check out the title tag of your competitor just above and below you. They might be getting more attention.
4)Check out for some other competitive product that might be altering your market.
5)Some festive season or holiday can alter the sales and search rate.

i hope this helps!

[phantombookman]

3)Check out the title tag of your competitor just above and below you. They might be getting more attention

A very important tip for those who may overlook its importance.
I doubled the traffic to a small niche site simply by adding 'the complete resource site' to the end of the title
Regards
Rod

[shahid]

Thanks for the advice. But title and meta description of my site are writeen for visitors while these at the competitors sites are writeen for search engines.