Reasons For Google Traffic Drops (Common Causes)
**Common Causes for Google Traffic Drops**
One a weekly basis, I talk to digital publishers that have seen a major drop in either traffic or revenue (commonly both). They’re trying to decipher why they’ve experienced the sudden shift. In many cases, the seemingly unprecedented change leads publishers to assume that the problem is related to [Google traffic drops](https://www.ezoic.com/one-strategy-to-solve-helpful-content-update-issues/) (search mainly) and that the corresponding drop in revenue is directly tied to this change.
What I’ve come to learn from hundreds and hundreds of these cases over the years is that every problem is relatively unique; however, there are usually some pretty easy ways to zero in on the exact issue causing the drop in traffic and revenue.
The secret to quickly solving these problems is approaching them like a puzzle. You cannot start with an immediate, blind assumption. You have to start with the data first and work backward. In this article, I’ll help you start with the most common ways you can start this analysis.
Separating Google traffic drops and revenue losses
Did my Google traffic drop?
A case study to learn from
1. **Check traffic sources**
2. **Check geo’s**
3. **Check devices**
4. **Check landing pages**
- **The downturn was sudden, suggesting some kind of event**
- **The traffic that was affected was organic traffic — mainly a Google traffic drop**
- **No geo’s or device types were affected more than others**
- **The homepage was the only page affected**
- **The homepage didn’t just have a decrease in traffic, it had absolutely zero traffic from Google on the day of the downturn**
The immediate takeaway in this analysis was that Google search suddenly stopped sending all search traffic to this site’s homepage. Why? It must have been de-indexed. If this was a manual action by Google for a violation, the whole site would be down, not just one page. If the homepage was being penalized by Google and pushed down the rankings for some reason, it is fair to assume they would still be getting a little traffic (not 0 visitors), right?
This left only one conclusion…
This site must have accidentally de-indexed their own homepage. Why would they do this? Well, obviously they did not mean to do this, but how could it have been possible?
When I approached the publisher about my conclusion, their response was that this was impossible. They had not intentionally done this and had not made any changes to their knowledge that could cause this. So, I asked them to think through every change or update they had done to the site the day prior to the downturn. Leave no stone unturned.
Most of what they delivered was pretty unassuming. They published a blog and updated some meta titles. But, there was one other thing. They added a new plugin inside of their WordPress CMS.
Once I examined the new plugin, I noticed it had several settings on it. One of them was the ability to enable no-follow designation on a specific page of the website. Sure enough, this plugin was active on the homepage and the setting for no-follow was checked. This means Google will not index this page!
**PROBLEM SOLVED**
They removed the plugin and their site was re-indexed by Google and saw normal traffic return within days.
Auditing our own potential website mistakes
Breaking down your Google traffic
> **Another quick example:** Another case I got recently, was a publisher who saw a small reduction in traffic gradually over time. We ultimately figured out it was referral traffic from e-mails. He remembered he had recently switched e-mail services for his newsletter. We discovered his new e-mail service was sending far more messages to spam and that was the reason for the drop. He switched his e-mail services back and the traffic leveled out again.
Get help below
Still having problems? This isn’t what I do anymore, but I’m happy to provide my expert insights in the comments section. Leave your issues below and I’ll chime in with my thoughts and advice. Hopefully, we can all learn from the experiences and get some nice case studies going below.
**Or read one of these good blogs on increasing your Google traffic.**
https://blog.ezoic.com/preparing-google-algorithm-changes-2018/
https://blog.ezoic.com/3-user-experience-metrics-correlated-seo/