Sudden drop in traffic after I bought domain and started AdWords
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Hi, I was wondering whether someone could have some advice for me. My blog was going really well. Traffic had been growing, reached 12,000 in April. Last week, I bought a domain (before that I was on the wordpress domain), I was approved for AdWords – and suddenly, I experienced a very sharp decrease in traffic. From 500 to 700 views per day to less then 200. It doesn’t seem to be picking up. Could someone advise me what the reason might be? Could it be because of AdWords and the new domain? I actually started promoting the blog much more so it doesn’t make much sense what’s happening.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
It is normal to experience a temporary drop in search engine traffic after changing domains, as search engines will need to re-index your site at the new address before it can show it in search results again. Once that re-indexing completes your search engine traffic should return to normal.
Aside from that, views fluctuate. Just because you had a certain number of views one month it doesn’t mean you’ll have the same or more next month, and just because views have been steadily rising for a few months it does not mean that trend will continue indefinitely.
Summer is starting in the northern hemisphere, where the majority of your readers appear to come from, so people are spending more time outside rather than reading blogs. So it’s normal for views to be lower than usual over these few months.
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Well, I don’t think that going from 700 views a day to 200 in one week when you increase your promotional activities is normal, with all respect… Especially when the trend was continuously positive for the several months prior to this moment. How long do you expect it will take for the traffic to recover?
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Right, he meant that you may see up and down trends. The sudden drop is most likely due to the domain change though. Give search engines a little time to sort that out. You can also sign up with Google’s Webmaster Tools to see what insights they have for you:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/#google-search-consoleAlso I’d recommend against making other major changes to the site right now: if you make one change at a time, you can see how the change affects things.
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The same thing happened to me. I upgraded from the WordPress domain to a unique URL (oldgreycat.blog) just about this time last month. I’ve long been accustomed to fluctuations in traffic, but the decrease has been dramatic. A few direct links on pertinent Facebook pages kept my traffic high for the end of last month, but that’s a tact I try not to take too often. (It wears out its welcome fast.) So I’m now looking at my worst month in over two years. It’s like starting over.
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Hi oldgreycat,
The information above also applies to your site, so I recommend giving search engines some time to re-index your site.
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Thanks. I did the Google webmaster thing last night, verified the site and uploaded the site map. I’m sure all will even out in the end.
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