Stats suddenly dropping
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Hello – something odd is happening with my stats page – hoping you can help me correct it. On June 4th, my site views suddenly dropped to about 3,000 (until then, views have ranged from 10-15,000 per day). They’ve remained at that lower number ever since. Any idea why?
My Google Search referrer seems to be counting okay.
Many thanks…
Carolyn Thomas
http://www.myheartsisters.orgThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Taking a closer look, the only major change is that your traffic from Google dropped by over half.
If you haven’t already, add your site to Google’s Search Console, so you can monitor search traffic from their end to see if there’s any relation: https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/
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Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I am now stuck in this Google Search Console endless loop. I’ve downloaded the link as directed but cannot seem to figure out how to “Upload an HTML file to your website”. The directions seem like gobbledygook to me. I’m sure they are not, but I’m not feeling well so I’ll wait until tomorrow and try again with Google’s Search Console when I feel better.
In your experience, why would traffic from Google suddenly drop by half?!?
Thank you.
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Hi, instead of trying to upload the file, can you use the options listed here?
https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/#google-search-console
You’ll pick the HTML Tag option, then paste it here:
https://wordpress.com/marketing/trafficWe have no idea why the traffic from Google dropped, but the console might have more information.
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PS Just found something interesting, via Google’s instructions: “To confirm whether your site is known by Google, search for site:<your_site_URL> on Google. For example, if your site were http://www.wikipedia.org, you’d search for this: site:wikipedia.org “
So when I tried this with my site, I immediately got 5,000 results from Google, all excerpts from my blog.
This looks like Google does “know” my site. Does this take the place of the ponderous Google search console or do I still try the HTML Tag option? If so I’ll try it tomorrow after my head finishes exploding…
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Does this take the place of the ponderous Google search console or do I still try the HTML Tag option? If so I’ll try it tomorrow after my head finishes exploding…
If you’re satisfied with that information, sure. You might find more info in the search console, too, so we’re happy to help you set that up if you get stuck with the steps we gave.
Do you need more help from us on this?
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Thanks for checking back, supernovia! I managed (with major help from a relative who works in Silicon Valley and who happens to be in town this weekend) to get into the Google Search console to the verification function. Now I have a “Check back in three days” message under the Performance/Coverage function page. So I will do that.
Meanwhile, I asked my whole family at today’s brunch to pull out their phones to try Googling a phrase that (previously) would have brought up my site in the top 3-5 results on the first page (e.g. “women’s heart attack symptoms”) but this morning, Heart Sisters was on nobody’s first page. Second page, yes – but not on the first. My next question (after I wait three days for the Performance/Coverage results from Google Search console) is not just IF Google traffic has dropped – I already know it has – but WHY (so that I can stop doing whatever caused it if that was part of the problem) and what can I do to fix that?
BUT I may never find out why, as I learned here – about a Google problem with de-indexing websites back in April 2019: “After six days of working to fix the indexing bug, Google claims to have solved the problem but did not elaborate on what exactly went wrong.”
Stay tuned… I’ll report back here if I learn anything new in three days!
regards,
Carolyn -
Ah, glad you were able to get the console added.
We don’t have a whole lot of insight into why Google would rank one site above another. As general rules I try to follow:
– Write useful content
– Use clear titles
– Use the phrases folks will search for
– Use captions and descriptions on your images (this is good for folks who can’t see the pictures, too.)Things I avoid:
– keyword stuffing
– unnatural phrasing just to get lots of keywords and phrases in
– too many tags
– burying useful the content people are searching for under backstories or other unrelated content
– putting so many images in a page that it’s hard to load
– doing anything to “cheat the system” because the system will always find out eventually ;)We have a lot more info on SEO here:
Bear in mind though, many people do SEO as a full-time job, and even then cannot guarantee you’ll show up on the first page with common search phrases. And sometimes the “tricks” people will suggest for landing in top results can get you banned from search engines.
Hopefully the console, which gives information from Google itself, will provide more insight.
Do note there’s one fairly common “error” that comes up in the search console: it will warn you that it cannot access /wp-admin and a few other “technical” files and directories. Given that your content isn’t there anyway, that’s okay. You do want them to be able to access the normal pages on your site, though. If you have any questions about messages you’re receiving in the console, let us know.
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Hello again supernovia – the first of the ‘wait three days’ reports has started to come back.
The first section is just a long list of dates and issues AT GOOGLE that have been corrected eg “Because of internal management of our Search index, some pages of your websites may have been dropped for a period of a few days without any action on your part…”
But this morning, the first of the ‘wait three days’ reports came in and the first is staggering. It is a “warning” saying that 345 of my blog articles have “images smaller than recommended”, with links to each of the 345 posts. In every case so far, these images are head shots of individuals mentioned in the post. This is standard journalism practice. Should I be inserting 8×10 photos instead?!?
And “smaller” than what? No indication of the ideal head shot size. Does WordPress ever warn bloggers not to use images that are “smaller” than Google will accept?
Apparently, I now must go back and delete each head shot and then report back to Google that I have “fixed” each one, at which time they will assess and issue a second report.
I have over 800 articles on my blog dating back to 2009. And this is only the FIRST section of the Google reports that have not yet come in with other “warnings”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t know if I can even stand looking at the next reports when they come in…
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And “smaller” than what?
No idea. You might check in for further details on your console dashboard, or try googling for the full message to see what others have found.
Best wishes whatever the recommendations end up being! If you do end up having to update all of your articles, perhaps you can work through the most important (or important to you) articles first. Good luck!
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