I think my blog is dying
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I used to have at least 180+ views a day and for months now I’m good if I get 20 views. On top of that I have lots of spam. I don’t even feel like blogging anymore because no one is going to see it.
I paid people on fiverr to see what’s going on because I thought I had errors…but they said they didn’t see anything. What could be going on here?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hello there,
Sorry to hear about your drop in traffic. Right off the bat, my guess is you were affected by the recent Google Panda update. The update basically is a tweak on the algorithm that determines how Google ranks their search results. From the time when you had 180+ views a day, your blog posts now might be ranking lower than usual, resulting in fewer clicks from visitors. To learn more about the Panda update, click here:
On top of that I have lots of spam.
Spam is something we deal with everyday, and admittedly we’ve seen a recent surge of them lately. Rest assured that we are learning their new tricks and we are making sure that their presence is kept at a minimum.
To learn more about spam and how to handle them, please see our support page:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/unwanted-comments/
Let me know if you need anything else. Thank you!
Andrew D.
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@druesome
FWIW I consider my blog traffic stats to be extremely low since May. I have conferred with other bloggers who also have sites on their own domains being hosted here. We all see a significant traffic drop since May but when I had Staff look into my stats and I was told nothing was wrong. Ha! I’m not convinced of that. More to the point is that I know my blog was not affected by the Panda algorithm update. -
Thank you so much for your response! I thought it was something I did. I feel so much better now. Well…. not all the way because I have low views but I’ll hang in there.
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You’re welcome! To get a better understanding of your search traffic, you may want to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
@TT
Can you point me to that thread so I can take a look? If much of your traffic comes from search and you saw a drop in that, there’s a chance that you were affected.
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I used to get 3600 hits a day, and I’m bouncing around 200 now. And if I ever find out whose idea it was to make global tag page links NoFollow I will…make them extremely uncomfortable.
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the stats here are in many ways useless for seeing some trends – Quantcast was way better – I can’t go back and look at traffic around the Panda changes – with Quantcast there was that ability – while the Panda did not have a drop off the cliff thing – the tend on my site over the last two weeks is downward for sure
since my traffic takes a 2/3 drop to December some trends are tough to figure out
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PS – since search traffic is not graphed it is impossible to really tell what changes to search engines do to traffic – if search drops but I have some very popular posts that will mask the real health of my traffic
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I have also noticed that by going back to old posts and reviewing the content and updating them that you can stimulate new interest through the search engines. I had a massive drop in hits in February 2013 (50%) but I haven’t noticed anything recently.
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Hi everyone!
I’m sorry that you find our statistics limited in terms of providing insights on your search traffic. As I have suggested, Google Webmaster Tools does a great job at that.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
Should you experience another drop in traffic (which I hope won’t happen again), try looking at Webmaster Tools instead. Thanks!
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@druesome
This is timethief logged in under my other username account. I have been all over Google webmasters and I know neither of my blogs http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com and http://thistimethisspace.com were caught up in the Panda algorithm update.I never ever appreciate being patronized with check your google webmaster’s account verbiage. I am intimately acquainted with that account, thanks.
It’s a fact that Google analtyics are running on all of our blogs here at WordPress.com but we bloggers cannot access them and that’s so maddening that I could SCREAM!
I also run sitemeter (non-javascript version) and have run it since long before there were WordPress.com stats.
As auxclass pointed out Quantcast was given the boot in January when they provided the metrics I used. Like auxclass I consider the stats we have now to be next to useless.
I reported the traffic drop-off to one cool site traffic in a private support when logged in as timethief and Shawna responded. I’m all in and all done. I am convinced something is wrong and that it is NOT one time issue.
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Hey timethief,
Sorry about the frustrations you’ve been having. Let me get back to you as I have our data team check out what might be going on in your stats. As far as I know, we haven’t done anything on our end that could have caused the drop in traffic you saw last year. Factors such as search engine algorithms, user behavior, incoming and outgoing links and many more play into the bigger picture. I appreciate your patience. Thanks!
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Hello timethief,
I’ve received an update from one of our developers and we both are on the same page regarding your search engine traffic:
I’m thinking her blog was severely pounded by Google’s algorithm tweaks
That seems like a good assumption going off the numbers in the following two pages we see a large decrease in refers from Google (and other search engines too) within her top referrers table however a slight increase from en.forums her other big referrer.
https://wordpress.com/my-stats/?blog=2598284&view=referrers&summarize&unit=1&numdays=365
https://wordpress.com/my-stats/?blog=2598284&view=referrers&summarize&unit=1&numdays=730
Overall traffic from search engines decreased 14% while traffic coming from Google dipped 12%. Traffic from the support forums went up by 4%.
Let me know if you have questions about this. Thanks!
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This is one of several threads on stats – I have some observations, some refer to other threads
Re Quantcast
WordPress.COM stats have “issues”
1) Nothing over 30 days counts (no graph or anything, yes they are buried but not real usable for looking at daily variations)2) Nothing over 30 weeks counts – see above
3) Noting over 30 months counts – see above
With Quantcast sections could be shown – helped a bit to understand what normal variation over months were. I could look back three or four months and see the min / max variations.
4) Demographics for areas, the % traffic from the greater Puget Sound area for example and I could see other areas that had a lot of boaters that I never thought of as boating areas, was very interesting. More bragging rights, but I can understand Matt not wanting us bloggers to see the info as the info would help estimate if a blog would do good as a .ORG with ads on it. yes cluster maps show a bit of the where views are from.
5) Ranking of blog for the U.S. – again just sort of bragging rights to see what the position was relative to the rest of the internet or last year. Alexa’s info is so sketchy as to be useless.
6) Webmaster Tools – so so for some things – the scaling is so bad that changes to searches does not really show up for trending. Yes some of the search terms are interesting, I can see what search terms give my blog page one results (or number one results for some things)
Had a couple of other thoughts but lost them – maybe later
thanks
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PS – I had to build a special spread sheet to show trending from year to year and through the year. My site has great seasonal variations, the new spread sheet lets me look at what happened last year and three years ago. Quantcast had most of that built in
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Hello! I find our stats system quite great but does lack some advanced features. Have you tried looking at Get Clicky and Site Meter as alternatives? Both allow non-Javascript tracking but I haven’t had the chance to use them extensively.
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Do you have a wishlist for specific features you were looking for in WordPress.com stats? There’s a chance I could mention these in an upcoming brainstorming session. Let me know!
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I have sitemeter running on both blogs. My sitemeter stats predate WordPress.com having a stats program of it’s own.
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I use Sitemeter – sort of OK in some ways
Sometimes I get traffic that spikes from a country and Post – I think someone in the Philippines must refer students to one of my Posts on correcting a compass.
Would be nice to be able to see where traffic comes from ( city) and how the visitor moves through a blog – would show maybe how changes affect traffic (I added pictures for some of my Posts to show what a different knot looks like) – would have been nice to see if the changes generated more page views
I liked the Quantcast part showing the % of traffic from a specific geo area (Seattle, Seattle / Tacoma, Los Angeles etc) – been some times that traffic for a specific Post about a person spiked, would have been nice to know if the traffic was from their city
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