Large Drop in Brand-name Traffic

[BedeFahey]

Hey folks,

I recently noticed a very large drop in brand-name traffic (in the realm of 50%) which coincided with some SEO changes to target non-brand-name searches. Thing is, the site is still ranking #1 for all the brand-name searches that the traffic drop happened in. (checked terms via SEOmoz toolbar, and also proxy with Bruce Clay's toolbar).

Any thoughts on where to start lookingfor the problem or what might have caused it? If this hadn't happened at the same time as other changes, I'd put this down to non-SEO problems.

[BedeFahey]

I didn't think to do this before I posted, but I checked out Google insights and there are portions for the past 3 years where the interest for these brand-name terms drops to 0 in the space of one month. Anyone know if this is an issue with Google data/insights, or if this might be a reliable indication of something happening in the world rather than just the site?

Cheers

[EGOL]

Google and competitors are constantly changing... could be one of these....

- Product search with big images newly appearing in your SERPs

- More aggressive adwords appearing in your SERPs (google getting more aggressive with the display or a competitor of yours gunning for  all of your sales)

- A competitor in your SERPs shouting a kickass price or free shipping in his title tags

- There could be many other things that google or competitors might have done

- Google now showing links to branded SERPs above position #1

But... my bet is that your title tags were changed and now you are poorly optimized for SERP position competition or poorly optimized for eliciting clicks.

[BedeFahey]

Thanks for the reply EGOL, I appreciate it.

I understand what you're saying about being optimized for eliciting clicks. I'm a little confused about what you mean by "poorly optimized for SERP position competition" given that they're still ranking #1 for the terms where the traffic drop has occurred, I'm assuming you don't mean ranking, so could you clarify that part a bit?

Thanks!

[EGOL]

I was wondering if the amount of traffic for long-term queries or the diversity of long term queries fell.

Rankings might still be at #1 for the primary terms but with drop off occurring on the many secondary terms.

[BedeFahey]

Ah, I see.

That has happened, but only to a very small extent - when I look at analytics, I can attribute  70%+ of the dropoff to a two-word phrase with 3 variants. It was their primary phrase by a good margin, and the traffic has tanked, even though they maintain rankings for it. It's very confusing.

I did notice on insights that in 2010 and 2009 there were a few months of each year where insights went from very high interest to 0 interest. It's happening in 2011, too, and we're currently in one of those periods. The start of that 0 period in insights coincides roughly with the traffic dropoff.

That said, I'm wary of deciding that that's the reason. There -were- changes to the title tags and content at that time, and it's hard to believe that it's just bad luck .

The primary traffic source for this phrase was Yahoo, not Google. The traffic drop has occurred in Google, but to a much lesser extent (Yahoo dropped about 50%. Google only dropped about 20%). Another reason for me to not want to give too much credence to the insights info.