There are many site owners that are upset and a bit confused about the sudden drop in visitor traffic to their websites. The blame? Many owners believe it’s due to the new Google Instant, but I think the decrease is a yo-yo affect which occurs right before a major update in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). I could be wrong, but I am sure some site owners are hoping that I am right. Sorry, I lost the phone number to Google’s hot-line.
Possible reasons why traffic from search drops
- Google Instant has somewhat of a negative effect on results, because results are now pushed down further on the page (more than normal). A person is more likely to click on ads at the top or the first few organic results. The results from position 4 to 10 will get less attention.
- Google Instant provides suggested queries and many of the queries may differ from what people are looking for. Therefore, people are choosing different suggestive queries and the results are obviously different and because of this, your results are probably pushed down further and possibly off page 1.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Google Instant, because it reduces the time it takes to enter a search term. Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term according to Google.
In time, your hard work will payoff, just be patient and keep doing what you’re doing.
If there’s an update in the next 24 hours, I will sure post about it!
I am also observing some change in Google search results, but for me it’s rather on the good side as one of my old post for a freeware is listed on first place for last two days and I am getting around 1000 visitors on that single post daily. Hope it gets better on others post’s as well.
Manpreet,
I love when change is in your favor. Kudos!
Hm.. I have to admit that i’ve noticed a sudden drop, so Google instant is to blame? I wonder if it’s going to affect the PR…
Mia,
I think it’s due to an update in progress. We will see soon enough.
great informative blog…….!!!!
yeah I heard that too that the google instant has badly affected the SEO methods and the visitors of site.
i concur, with google instant the traditional way of how me market our websites would definitely change… The focus now is more on long tailed keywords, and localized keywords to show up on the top results. With that the competition becomes tighter.
I had no idea that there was a yo-yo just before a major SERP update. Keeping my fingers crossed that that is the reason – and that my sites go up in the update!
Guy,
It usually means some update is coming and usually it’s a major update.
Yeah, many of my big keywords are jumping 10-15 spots at a time, every couple days.
They jump up 10 spots, then drop ten, jump ten, then drop ten.
John,
It’s called the Google dance and wait until all calms down….A major change is coming.
Ah, I see, thanks so much for the info, great to know!
While googling I came to this blog site and found very interesting information here.
There’s a very unpleasant side effect if you are used to navigating backwards with the Delete key — Google Instant doesn’t allow that any more, instead assuming that you are modifying your search query.