Decrease in orders by67% on March 17, 2011

[JohnMcGreevy]

We sell some 25,000 products over the web on our site and on March 17, 2011 our orders

dropped by 67% and have remained at this lower level since.  Any one know of any Google

changes on this date that could have caused this decrease?

Thanks John

[BlinkWeb]

None that I am aware of. What about traffic sources? Did traffic drop? How much and from which sources?

[aarondicks]

I don't know of any Google updates on that day, and a quick Google search doesn't seem to throw anything up...

Could you expand on your post a little more? Did you lose more long tail traffic, branded traffic etc. Do you know whether any powerful links to your site were removed, or whether there was any downtime on your site/sitemap whilst being crawled (check Google Webmaster Tools for crawl errors)

[groomingguys]

Obvious questions maybe but could it be something to do with a change on your site rather than SEO reasons? E.g. navigation, checkout process or loss of a payment option