• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Why has my search traffic suddenly tanked?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Why has my search traffic suddenly tanked?

        Technical SEO
        4
        7
        2003
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • Gavin.Atkinson
          Gavin.Atkinson last edited by

          On 6 June, Google search traffic to my Wordpress travel blog http://www.travelnasia.com tanked completely. There are no warnings or indicators in Webmaster Tools that suggest why this happened. Traffic from search has remained at zero since 6 June and shows no sign of recovering.

          Two things happened on or around 6 June. (1) I dropped my premium theme which was proving to be not mobile friendly and replaced it with the ColorMag theme which is responsive. (2) I relocated off my previous hosting service which was showing long server lag times to a faster host. Both of these should have improved my search performance, not tanked it.

          There were some problems with the relocation to the new web host which resulted in a lot of "out of memory" errors on the website for 3-4 days. The allowed memory was simply not enough for the complexity of the site and the volume of traffic. After a few days of trying to resolve these problems, I moved the site to another web host which allows more PHP memory and the site now appears reliably accessible for both desktop and mobile. But my search traffic has not recovered.

          I am wondering if in all of this I've done something that Google considers to be a cardinal sin and I can't see it.

          The clues I'm seeing include:

          • Moz Pro was unable to crawl my site last Friday. It seems like every URL it tried to crawl was of the form http://www.travelnasia.com/wp-login.php?action=jetpack-sso&redirect_to=http://www.travelnasia.com/blog/bangkok-skytrain-bts-mrt-lines which resulted in a 500 status error. I don't know why this happened but I have disabled the Jetpack login function completely, just in case it's the problem.

          • GWT tells me that some of my resource files are not accessible by GoogleBot due to my robots.txt file denying access to /wp-content/plugins/. I have removed this restriction after reading the latest advice from Yoast but I still can't get GWT to fetch and render my posts without some resource errors.

          • On 6 June I see in Structured Data of GWT that "items" went from 319 to 1478 and "items with errors" went from 5 to 214. There seems to be a problem with both hatom and hcard microformats but when I look at the source code they seem to be OK. What I can see in GWT is that each hcard has a node called "n [n]" which is empty and Google is generating a warning about this. I see that this is because the author vcard URL class now says "url fn n" but I don't see why it says this or how to fix it. I also don't see that this would cause my search traffic to tank completely.

          I wonder if anyone can see something I'm missing on the site. Why would Google completely deny search traffic to my site all of a sudden without notifying any kind of penalty?

          Note that I have NOT changed the content of the site in any significant way. And even if I did, it's unlikely to result in a complete denial of traffic without some kind of warning.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Gavin.Atkinson
            Gavin.Atkinson last edited by

            Hi guys, thanks for picking that up. Don't know why I missed it! GA code was in the header.php of the old theme and was lost when I switched themes. I've added it back now so I'll see what happens.

            I can see how that would have impacted the search traffic graph on Moz Pro, but I'm still not sure if it would have affected how Moz reports my keyword rankings. Did I really suffer big drops in the SERPs as Moz reported? Or was it just a side-effect of Moz not being able to see traffic in my GA account?

            Tony

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • TheeDigital
              TheeDigital last edited by

              As L Slversen said, your Google Analytics tracking code is missing so you wouldn't be recording traffic. This probably happened with your theme changed and likely the traffic you are still seeing on the site is not legitimate, more than likely ghost referral spam traffic.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • LSIversen
                LSIversen last edited by

                I would start out by making sure you put back the analytics tracking code, since that's not there right now (checked both with Google Tag Assistant & in the source code). So it makes sense you can't see any traffic from search, since there is no tracking. That probably explains a lot of it.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                • KyleEaves
                  Kyle Eaves @Gavin.Atkinson last edited by

                  I searched for the keyword "asian travel tips" and you were on the 3rd page of Google. I clicked and went to your website, so you should see at least one organic visit. Your site seemed to load pretty quickly, so that is good. Check the stats for today and let me know if the visit shows up. If you don't see it, there must be something wrong with your analytics tracking, which I feel must be the case because your visits dropped to zero. It just doesn't seem right that you wouldn't have at least a couple visits show up.

                  Have you been tracking some of your keywords daily with the rank tracker tool? That is a better way to get an update more often on your site's ranking for specific keywords since you can run it every day and see how the keywords have tracked over time rather than waiting for the weekly update.

                  I ran a site:www.travelnasia.com query and it looks like you've got 806 pages indexed in Google. Does that seem about right?

                  I scanned your site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It's a pretty nice tool, check it out if you haven't yet. It definitely helps with locating and fixing broken links. The tool also gives you access to tons of information about your site. Here are some sample reports from your site:
                  Crawl Overview: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/74533600/crawl_overview.xls
                  404 Errors: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/74533600/client_error_%284xx%29_inlinks.xls
                  No Response Links: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/74533600/no_response_inlinks.xls

                  Hopefully you're able to get this figured out quickly. I'll let you know if I think of anything else. Best of luck!

                  Kyle Eaves
                  SEO Specialist
                  KyleEaves.com

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Gavin.Atkinson
                    Gavin.Atkinson last edited by

                    Hi Kyle, thanks for taking a look. No, my keyword rankings took a hit (48 up, 149 down) over the past week but I am still ranking for lots of keywords. About half of my #1-3 keywords dropped back to #4-10. If this keeps up I expect my keywords will take a much bigger hit. In fact I am already seeing evidence of that. My URL http://www.travelnasia.com/thailand/wararot-chiang-mai-day-market/ shows in Moz as still ranking #1 for "Wararot Chiang Mai day market" on Friday but in fact I now don't even list on the first 3 pages of results.

                    When you say I have a lot of 404s on my site, where are you getting that info? As of Friday, Moz shows 37 404 errors on the site and many of those are leftovers from dropping my premium theme (e.g. placecategory instead of category). But I should fix them, I agree.

                    And yes, none of that really points to why Google would stop sending me any search traffic, and yet that seems to be what's happened.

                    I've added some screenshots below which may be helpful.  I am still getting traffic, but not from organic search.

                    132b5cfdfc27ef5792f83a81e5ac739c 95ccf8387df343022b3a7aad2e17c8e1 95ccf8387df343022b3a7aad2e17c8e1

                    KyleEaves 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • KyleEaves
                      Kyle Eaves last edited by

                      Have you checked your keyword rankings yet? Have they completely dropped off too? Hard to believe Google would completely drop your site overnight. Maybe there is an issue with your analytics tracking code being removed when you switched your website's theme. Are you seeing other traffic in GA?

                      Regardless, it looks like you've got a decent amount of broken links & 404 errors on your site. I doubt Google would kill your traffic over that, but it wouldn't hurt to fix these items so that once you're back online the Google Bot is not tripping over broken links.

                      Kyle Eaves
                      SEO Specialist
                      KyleEaves.com

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • JoelssonMedia

                        Page disappears from Google search results

                        Hi, I recently encountered a very strange problem.
                        One of the pages I published in my website ranked very well for a couple of days on top 5, then after a couple of days, the page completely vanished, no matter how direct I search for it, does not appear on the results, I check GSC, everything seems to be normal, but when checking Google analytics, I find it strange that there is no data on the page since it disappeared and it also does not show up on the 'active pages' section no matter how many different computers i keep it open. I have checked to page 9, and used a couple of keyword tools and it appears nowhere! It didn't have any back links, but it was unique and high quality. I have checked on the page does still exist and it is still readable. Has this ´happened to anyone before? Any thoughts would be gratefully received.

                        Technical SEO | | JoelssonMedia
                        0
                      • Extima-Christian

                        Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?

                        Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt." I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this: User-Agent: *
                        Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?

                        Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian
                        1
                      • Koki.Mourao

                        Image Search

                        Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof.  I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2)  Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.  
                        So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
                        B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you

                        Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
                        0
                      • Jcoley

                        Sudden jump in the number of 302 redirects on my Squarespace Site

                        My Squarespace site www.thephysiocompany.com has seen a sudden jump in 302 redirects in the past 30 days. Gone from 0-302 (ironically). They are not detectable using generic link redirect testing sites and Squarespace have not explanation. Any help would be appreciated.

                        Technical SEO | | Jcoley
                        0
                      • Lindsay_D

                        Tool to search relative vs absolute internal links

                        I'm preparing for a site migration from a .co.uk to a .com and I want to ensure all internal links are updated to point to the new primary domain. What tool can I use to check internal links as some are relative and others are absolute so I need to update them all to relative.

                        Technical SEO | | Lindsay_D
                        0
                      • Qon

                        How to handle (internal) search result pages?

                        Hi Mozers, I'm not quite sure what the best way is to handle internal search pages. In this case it's for an ecommerce website with about 8.000+ products and search pages currently look like: example.com/search.php?search=QUERY+HERE. I'm leaning towards making them follow, noindex. Since pages like this can be easily abused for duplicate content and because I'd rather have the category pages ranked. How would you handle this?

                        Technical SEO | | Qon
                        0
                      • nicole.healthline

                        How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags?

                        How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags? For example, www.domain.com/abc#xyz.

                        Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline
                        0
                      • glennfriesen

                        Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?

                        If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg

                        Technical SEO | | glennfriesen
                        1

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.