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A major change in the design, was adjusted around May 1, and we were eager to see how we made it through that change, as far as seo went.
Yesterday, panic struck, when I began checking he Yahoo update done on May 8/9, I had identifed a major loss in our traffic. Frantic troubleshooting began, and we managed to narrow it down to Yahoo, entirely, with our Google traffic up.
So, everybody began pounding Yahoo checking rankings, while I checked the logs. Nothing. Everything was excellent, even better than excellent compared to the last Yahoo update.
Puzzled, I hit Alexa. There it was. Yahoo page views are way down, over 20%, lower than they have been in 2 years. Less page views means less time on the site, less likely to search, less likely to send us traffic, less traffic to send to our clients, and less Adsense earnings for us, and clients. Not good.
Yahoo page views are normally around 80,000 per million visitors. Since late April, early May 2005 it has been declining, and is now at 60,000, a 20% decline, all within about a ten day period, though there has been no shift in their site rank. When viewing the 2 year stats at Alexa, it can be seen...the lowest in 2 years, and way off even for the season. The decline is much more than normal beginning of the month slow down, and much more than normal internet traffic decline for the season, now here at the 11th of the month it is obvious, something is wrong at Yahoo ... and the decline is sliding hard.
Compared to their competitors, this seems isolated to Yahoo. Page views at MSN and Google are up long term, and for the season.
Seems something is amiss at Yahoo. Any ideas? A navigational change that has reduced active surfing? A partner change? Anyone?
Thank you, don't mind if I do.
More research. Seems Yahoo made a critical error in their site navigation. I ran through the Way Back Machine at Alexa, and found indeed the site layout had changed significantly, recently.
There may be multiple problems, but the biggest problem I see is moving the shopping sector from main page center, where it was right at eye level and commanded instant attention.
It was removed to make way for a variety of different topics, as they seem to be rotating topics, looking for gold. While panning that gold stream, they found only mud, and in the mud they are, with that 20% drop in page views, which is killing not only them, but every other site on the web that gets yahoo search traffic.
I suggest they go back to the old format, shopping, in two zones in the layout, the marketplace, and back where it was before, about where the movies promo is...and knock off the silly stuff. R&D needs to be a less wreckless, in MHO.
I'm sure that is not the only problem, but maybe R&D needs to do some research on the changes in their traffic, via the Way Back Machine. For those kids at the desks at Yahoo, that is a reference to a wise guy cartoon (no not mafia), us boomers liked to watch, back in the dark ages...not just an Alexa tool.
Everybody knows that summer is the weak season for movies...even weaker than shopping. Why not use that zone for a ring tone promo, feature thousands of ring tones? Now, there is a topic for summer, that will be hotter than the sand between my toes at Key West. All those kids out of school, now with the cell phone glued to their ears, nearly around the clock. How can you go wrong? You know they spend nearly all their time finding that next hottie tune, to impress their friends.
Come on Yahoo, give us all a break. Dog days of summer are right around the corner, and you're losing 20% of your page views. The trickle down of your economics is failing to trickle into my bottom line. But, the trickle down of your R&D slackers, has trickled right into my worst summer night's dream.
Great post!
I don't know enough about Yahoo to contribute to your post (sorry) but I will say I appretiate it and learn alot from reading posts like yours.
Thanks!
Actually, if you look at the two year picture at Alexa, the page views went from about 93,000 per million to 60,000 per million. That is a massive decline in the two year period, even comparing seasons, apples to apples.
Since the overall ranking of the site has been unchanged, it is not really a case of traffic loss in unique visitors, more than is usual for the season, just how much surfing those visitors do on the site.
Everybody knows that the real measure of success on an informational site is surfing behavior. As each visitors moves to the next page, you get an additional crack at showing them something of interest, and can place more ads in front of them.
On an informational site, where membership is free, the only source of revenue is advertising commissions. That is why the page view are so important. So, in the case of Yahoo, you want those things that will generate revenue to be seen immediately, no matter which page is loaded first, and you also want them to see those ads that ultimately generate paychecks.
I'm not seeing a main page at Yahoo, that is doing that. They are missing their mark. Given they just launched their Small Business Local wesites, I'm wondering why it is below the fold, below a big games promo, today. It is getting harder and harder to locate their shopping and auctions, when they get moved around all the time, without logical reasoning, from a visitor point of view.
But, maybe, just maybe they took notice. I see a slight incline now, very slight, on the page views there. Hoping that incline continues, and all the small business sites on the web, can prosper from a corrected decline. It could be a very loooong summer.
One thing to bear in mind with your 2 year evaluation is that the advent of spyware has brought many users to regularly scan with one of the common anti-spyware tools.
Alexa is picked up as spyware by many of these tools and is removed... so the decline in pageviews may also be due to the decline of the usage of the Alexa browser helper that is built into IE.
(Plus the increased used of alternate browsers, with FireFox being the notable one)
Craig
When you see a stat that is one day, for example 100, the next day is 1, that is indicative of a single act that has resulted in a dramatic change. Such as the change we saw on September 12, 2001. One day traffic behavior and origins were predictable, the next day something happened, and the third day, the traffic stats plunged. A single act, or a combination of acts all enabled at a single time, create plunging stats.
What we saw with Yahoo was rather steady stats, similar to the their competitors, for the past two years. Then, what looks to be April 23rd, the traffic began to plunge, sharply. April 22 it was at 80,000, by April 30 it had plunged to 65,000. The difference in traffic behavior,is that in the past two prior years, the traffic had mostly moved within the 5,000 plus or minus range within a calendar week. That is normal for the web, given that weekend traffic is lighter, every week, almost without exception. (mother's day it was higher for shopping and gaming sites, mom was home enjoying her computer more than usual) At April 30, 15,000 had far exceeded anything that could be identified as gradual.
But, then it fended off the slide for about 3 days, and slide again another 5,000, to land at 60,000. This is far too much to accredit to overall changes in the web. If any rule could be applied to this site, it has to be applied to all sites, if the result is credited to an overall methodology in web usage or statistic gathering. You can't just apply it to one site.
When you look at MSN and Google, you don't see the kind of sharp change you see here at Yahoo, for this period. So, we can only surmise, the change is specific to Yahoo only, and is internal.
It is that plunge from April 23-30 that we are really looking at. To see if the plunge is statistically normal, by day of the week, week of the month, month of the year, or season of the year, we look back over history to compare. That is the only reason we looked at the two year stats... to see if this was a common wide fluctuation. It wasn't. It wasn't common to Yahoo. It wasn't common to Yahoo competitors.
You mention in your thread that you believe your retreat in traffic from Yahoo is a direct result of something Yahoo has done..
You looked at your listings/logs and state that everything looks good..
Have you checked to see if Yahoo has retained the same count of pages from your site over time?
When I check Yahoo I see that you only have 235 pages in Yahoo...yet the feel of your site is that it is much bigger...
Have you also checked to make sure that you backlink count is the same? Remember...that there is significant traffic to be had from inbound links...and in some cases... the inbound links can supply you with more traffic then search results...
Yahoo shows that you have 707 inbounds...
Perhaps you volume of inbounds has recently changed..?
What's the deal with your link that claims to be a "site map" only to be directed away from your site to another resource called thesitemap.com? this is puzzeling?
And your site is hosted at Homestead? your IP# shows 66,000 other sites hosted there as well...and much of this is crap...
Just some additional grist for the pot...
Our server has many other clients, that is not our own company owned server, obviously, and they host a lot of home pages. We chose them for a specific seo reason, many years ago, and for that particular seo purpose, it has worked very well. We are not bothered by their other clients, and what they do on the web. It is not our business, and doesn't affect us. Our revenue growth tell us that.
Again, we are not sharing that info;) But, suffice it to say, we will not be leaving homestead for the hub of our operations, unless they go belly up, and that is unlikely... they have hosted over 30 million sites, 75 employees, and are on top of development, technology wise.
It seems pretty basic, I know...to the average seasoned webmaster toiling away at site maintenance, but as I have said before... sometimes the web is over intellectualized by the old school. Thinking outside the box, and throught evolution can be very profitable. This old school girl evolved, and in the process, learned a some new tricks. An open mind is a good thing.
Before that we hosted on a linux system, hand coded every page, and the difference in our revenue stream, has been unbelievable, no, I take that back, it has been awesome...with the change... that was about 6 years ago.
It is not that our ranking has changed, at Yahoo, it is the traffic flow has changed. The Alexa traffic data tells the story.
We print hardcopy of the logs and back links each day...extensive data on hardcopy to closely examine. We don't see any changes, only increased backlinks, and only that the page views are off at yahoo. Now, our traffic flow is (was) off, nearly the same percentage, in the exact same time period, as the Yahoo plunge (portrayed at Alexa). Seems pretty cut and dried from where we sit.
I have already began to compensate for the loss of traffic at Yahoo, and have already exceeded the old traffic level. I don't waste any time when I see any decline that is not explained by day of the week...week of the month...season....
I compensate first, crunch numbers after.
Stats late yesterday and today show the changes we made here to compensate are working ... so not a problem here. (helps to be indexed by Google near constantly to see what is working, or not, quickly)
Just thinking on the industry as a whole level.
I did the math on this one in just a few seconds...
your IP# shows 66,000 other sites hosted there as well...and much of this is crap...
It also appears that there are daily spam reports identified with the IP you are on. No doubt with 66,212 other websites there is bound to be a problem.
