Webmaster tools - a drop in Views and Searches

[Bulpen]

Hi everybody

I'm experience a very odd thing in Webmaster Tools (and Google Analytics). 4. March I can se a drop of views from about 2000 views a day to 250 views a day and the days thereafter they views are close to zero. Also some of the search term looks weird after this and is terms like w www.youtube.com, youtube musicas and youtube i put a spell on you, placing them in SERP in top 10 and refering to our /Youtube site (which is a blank site with no content).

5. March we got some new content on our site regarding danish flyers, and even though Webmaster Tools shows that our views are close to zero, Google Analytics shows an increase of trafic to our site from search terms from about 150 visits 4. March to about 600 visits 16. March. So what Webmaster Tools shows about views do not make any sense to me and especially not why we would rank on the term Youtube. I have also searched on some of these Youtube search terms and I can't see us ranking in SERP on these terms in top 10, but in Google Analytics I can see that we have got visits on these Youtube search terms.

The domain we are using is an old domain that hosted an e-mail and chat site and I am a bit worried about the external links to our site. But the external links that Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer shows I don't see as bad links and the site has not had anything to do with Youtube clips. Our site is a https site - I don't know if that could have anything to do with it?

So I'm really puzled about why Webmaster tools says our Views have dropped to zero, why Google Analytics says there is an increase of trafic from search to our site and what Youtube search terms have to do with our site?

[Paddy_Moogan]

Hi Maja,

Thanks for your question. It can be hard to diagnose without looking at the site in question (the links you provided to Webmaster Tools won't work for anyone not given access to the account) so I'm shooting in the dark a little.

Gut feeling says that this is a technical problem. Did you make any technical changes to your website around those dates?

A few other suggestions:

1. I'd suggest going back and double checking your code for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools code to make sure they are working correctly. You can use a Chrome plugin such as Google Tag Assistant to do this.

2. Check the hostname in your Google Analytics report to see if any other domains (not your own) are showing up in your reports. This can happen sometimes if someone has started using your Google Analytics code and your data can get very messed up.

Here is a more in-depth article which may help you:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2300842/Google-Analytics-Hostname-Report-Great-for-Troubleshooting

3. Use tools such as Spyonweb and Nerdydata to search for your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools code snippets to see if other sites may be using them.

4. Narrow down the problem by adding in landing pages to your Google Webmaster Tools report. This report allows you to see which landing pages people are landing on and may help to de-bug the problem a little bit more.

I hope that helps!

Paddy