Anyone being slapped by the "Penguin"?

[lazer]

Following Google's housekeeping (beginning in late May), we have seen a drop in visitor rates of around 20%. Oddly, our PR hasn't changed at all.

We're just a standard xenForo installation, no tricks or gimmicks, so this is really frustrating.

Anyone else seeing similar drops?

 

[Sheratan]

Hmm... PR 1 (January) to PR 0 (June).

Anyway, I don't really think about it too much.

 

[RobParker]

This is our "search traffic" from GA

I don't think it's very useful though as our audience is seasonal and always increases towards the end of May.

 

[lazer]

I don't think it's very useful though as our audience is seasonal and always increases towards the end of May.

Yeah, give it a few more months and you'll have a better picture.

Here's our GA search traffic...

 

[RobParker]

@lazer, is it total visitors or search traffic you're looking at? I imagine it's quite hard to see the signal from the algorithm changes as hopefully your site will increase in traffic year after year which might hide any search traffic signal.

I'd imagine that search traffic as a percentage of the total traffic is a better metric.

 

[lazer]

We're a 10 year old forum, so we have seen our fair share of fluctuations. It was just that this latest change has had the greatest, most dramatic effect in recent times.

 

[RobParker]

The ratio between the blue (total) and orange (search) here seems to be roughly constant.

 

[lazer]

We run at about 90% search traffic - pretty much standard for our niche.

In your graphic above, I would say that your total traffic, since June, has grown exponentially, away from the search traffic. Have you seen a more pronounced upwards curve (search traffic) in previous years, at this time?

 

[RobParker]

It's hard to say as our peak is normally in August but the search traffic is maybe slightly lower relatively than we've seen in previous years. Like I said, it's hard to see the signal though.

 

[lazer]

As we are a Technology based forum, I'm thinking that the dip is a combination of our usual Summer drop in traffic (school holidays, weather etc..), accentuated by whatever Google are fiddling with at the moment. We haven't changed anything, so whatever is is affecting traffic is beyond our control. I'm hoping that we'll see an improvement in line with our usual upturn in traffic, later in the Summer.

 

[OSS 117]

Wouldn't dips account for tech release downturns and not necessarily seasonal changes? I used to think summer was the least active season but in my experience it's been great.

I mean you could get the best of all seasons by opening up an HVAC forum. And I'll see myself out for that pitiful joke.

 

[lazer]

Wouldn't dips account for tech release downturns and not necessarily seasonal changes?

Not really, no. We deal with the "fixing" side of things.