Traffic dropped in mid-Dec

See attached graph from Google Analytics for my vBSEO'ed forum.

This shows Google (organic) traffic only.

There's a period in Sept-Nov last year when I did not have Google Analytics running, marked in black, so ignore that part.

You can see in mid-Dec referrals dropped off sharply and haven't come back. It did something very similar earlier last year in March and April.

Do you think this is normal ebb and flow of search engine referrals or indicative of a possible penalty I should worry about?

Does anyone else see patterns like this?

Thanks,
Eric

By what percentage did your referrals drop? Did you make any changes to your site during the previous 1-2 month period? Did you experience any downtime?

Have you noticed any specific competitors outranking you now on terms that used to generate traffic for you?

It dropped by a lot... I get about only 15% of what I was getting.. roughly 1/8th.

I can't think of any changes and I don't think there was any downtime.

It's not a particular term.. it's pretty broad. Whereas before in a week it would be say 4,700 different phrases, in the last week it was only about 500 different phrases, so it is like a lot few pages are indexed ?

Anyway, do you think that's the normal traffic ebb and flow (it does seem to have happened once before in March - April last year) or do you think it indicates a penalty?

Eric

It certainly could be the result of an algorithm update that impacted you negatively. Keep us posted to see if it persists. How long did it last before? Less than two months and then it returned to normal levels?

You should check some of the terms that you previously ranked for, but are now getting less (or no) traffic from. Search for them at Google. Has any new competitor arose. Are you pushed down a few pages, or are you simply not ranking at all for these terms now?

Thanks, I'll look into it.

I may have changed the vB archive options when I install vBSEO 3.1, could that have a major effect like this?

Actually since I have the Google Analytics data, I can probably figure that out :-) i.e. see which entry pages were getting the google referrals.

Eric

Take a look at your data, and let us know if you see any patterns.

From what I could see, I used to get A LOT of hits to my /sitemap/ folder... this is from looking at the Content Drilldown report in Google Analytics and comparing one week in July, 2007 to one week in January 2008. The other forums including the home page didn't seem to change much ?

I don't want to draw any conclusions yet, but I'm going to try the
"Keep vB's Archive default settings" on both of my boards and see if traffic goes up... if that was the issue, then the traffic increase should be dramatic and obvious in the next couple of weeks..

I will let you know!

Eric

Have you ever changed the archive settings before?

Yes, see above. I think I remember changing it when I installed vBSEO 3.1... I was going through all the settings and made them consistent on my two boards.

Anyway, since I changed it to vB's default on both boards, if I see a change in traffic on both of them in 2-3 weeks, we might be able to infer something. I'll let you know how it goes..

Eric

Can you post some time line information:

• Date of forum start
• Date of vBSEO installation (Traffic to this point)
• Date of change of archive settings (same as vBSEO install - yes?)
• Date of noticed traffic changes (one or more)

This information makes it easier to visualize the progression.

There's a chart in my initial post.

>>Date of change of archive settings (same as vBSEO install - yes?) <<

No, I've been running vBSEO since I set up the board in the summer of '06. Read above, I think I changed the archive setting when I installed 3.1 to make it consistent with my other board, I installed 3.1 within a day after it was released.

Anyway, let me test this and I'll let you know if anything happens to traffic, it's on two boards so that should reduce the variables if something happens to both.

Eric

Ok Eric - thanks for the update. Let us know how it works. I'm not a fan of using vBulletin's default archive settings by any means, but let's see how it impacts your particular situation.