Starting this past weekend, my traffic started to slip. I'm now down about 16% from last week. After looking at the search engine referrals and everything else, I can only conclude that it's because of the sudden bout of balmy weather in much of the US.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
JS_Harris
4:01 am on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
Not I.
You can start to rule out a search engine downgrade by looking at your analytics. If only ONE search engine sent less traffic it may be a downgrade from that search engine (or a new competitor). If ALL search engines sent less traffic at the same time the problem (if there is one) lays elsewhere.
dickbaker
4:42 am on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
The search engines are all down about the same percentage.
The country is supposed to get some cold weather and possibly snow in the northern states this weekend. If traffic to the site comes back up, my question will be answered.
maximillianos
11:38 am on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
We have seen about a 3% slip this week. Not factoring in St Patrick's Day. We knew that day would be lower.
We've had awesome weather here in the Midwest. Might attribute to it. I know I was outside more and on my computer much less. ;-)
dickbaker
1:43 pm on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
I went from ~32,000 page views on Saturday to ~26,000 yesterday. A steady decline. The numbers from Google, Yahoo, Bing, direct referrals and smaller search engines declined roughly the same percentage.
It's hard to be certain, though, because Google makes up such a large portion of my traffic, five times what either Yahoo or Bing provides.
maximillianos
2:08 pm on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
Are you having any problems with your pages/server? Having an even drop/decline from all search engines would make me think your site is either having:
1. Season change for your demographic/niche 2. Some technical issue
Have you noticed any lag in your page loading times? I know when a scraper hits my sites, they become dogs and can't serve up pages to the general audiences at the same rate...
dickbaker
7:54 pm on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
Looking back at last year, I see that there was a drop on March 16th. That was also the first day that temperatures across the much of the country got up into the 50's, 60's and 70's after having been in the 30's and 40's.
My niche does slow down when the warm weather arrives. If we get into some cold weather again, I'd expect traffic to pick up.
If there's something wrong with my site, I can't find it.
Philosopher
7:57 pm on Mar 18, 2010 (gmt 0)
Don't forget Spring Break started in many places throughout the US this week so you're going to have many people on vacation, etc.
JS_Harris
8:32 pm on Mar 19, 2010 (gmt 0)
I went from ~32,000 page views on Saturday to ~26,000 yesterday. A steady decline.
My site does the same thing over those five days and works its way back up in the next two. Analytics lets you compare day vs day, week vs week, month vs month etc, try comparing this week to last week and then wait another couple of weeks to see where you stand before getting overly worried. A catastrophic problem would have sent you much lower.
maximillianos
3:41 pm on Mar 20, 2010 (gmt 0)
I also just realized here in the US there is the annual phenom known as March Madness. It started on Thursday, March 18th.
