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Hi Moz Community

I've got a Google Analytics question that I can't seem to find an answer for.

We have a client that we have tracked monthly organic visits over time.  From 2017- 2020.  At the end of each month we take the report from the previous month update direct & organic visits and other general observations, performance etc.

In December the client had an ask around validating the data because someone internally had been looking at Google Analytics and the total organic visits for the month in question was not the same as the data we'd entered in that month way back in October of 2017.

In November 2017 when we pulled the organic data we showed 485,891 organic visits.  In Dec 2019 we pulled the same organic data and the total was now 485,234 organic visits.  July 2018 451,589 when pulled again in Dec 2019 that organic number was 446,156.  A few hundred here or there isn't a gigantic deal but in some cases were talking about a difference of thousands of organic visits.

Spot checking various months from 2017 through to Jan 2020 shows these monthly organic totals having some pretty big swings against the number originally pulled.

I've never seen this and I'm not sure how I should be explaining to the client why our old numbers don't line up against the same data pulled more recently.

I'm importing sets of keywords that I've added locations to.  Then I'm setting tags based on the city so I can pull a set of 15 keywords for each local market.  I've noticed a couple typos that are now coming back to haunt me because I can't find a way to edit the typo without deleting the keyword & starting from scratch.  When that happens I need to individually tag the keyword to 60 different locations.  (I've spotted 3 typos (ugh - I wish I'd checked those more carefully before).

I'm looking for a way to edit the keyword phrases but see how I can do that.

We've never checked the server logs but I'm going to put in a request for that.  Analytics hasn't been touched & we've checked to ensure it's correctly installed.

Unfortunately the client has seen a drop in leads & sales.

Again great thoughts & questions.  We have a few years worth of analytics & the vertical type is bankruptcy (chapter 11).  There is seasonality but not at this particular time of year & we've never seen a drop that was this significant.

From a ranking standpoint we'd never actually gotten to page one but we'd seen a very steady climb & traffic was starting from zero when the site was launched.  So there was no rank drop per but we weren't on page one.

No other marketing at the time & certainly nothing that could have impacted traffic.

We've started to see a very slow increase in traffic so we'll monitor it closely & continue to do the best work we can.

Good question, no there hasn't been a drop for the exact match keyword specifically.  It may be important to note that we've focussed on a bucket of 25-30 phrases that are similar & relevant.

I've been insisting the same thing as you mention here, the exact match doesn't give you the boost it once did but I've never seen a "penalty".  This is where I believe that Google is letting us down, without a penalty it becomes incredibly difficult to see an issue.

Hey Moz Community

Our team has been racking our collective brains about a 90% drop in traffic a niche client of ours has seen.  The traffic drop occurred September 20th.  The site averages 300-400 unique visits a month (very targeted & niche) & dropped to 30-40 uvm.

The domain is on an exact match but other then that I can't see anything that would be deserving of such a significant drop in traffic.  Our campaign had been performing very well & we were seeing steady gains in traffic & ranking over the long term until September 20th.

I'm curious if the exact match update would have such a big impact months after it was released (July/July if I remember correctly).  I also didn't think it could be such a big issue because that domain has been used by us for a couple years.

Is the Exact Domain Match such a big deal?

eJGe3Vw

This was the piece I was missing.  I assumed the settings would have been tied together.

It looks like I have my answer from the comment above.

I would have thought the Pro & Moz Analytics settings would have been tied together but it seems like they aren't.

This is the problem, I'll clean up both sides.

thanks

Depending on if you're using SEOMoz Pro App (classic version) just click on setting & unmark the reports you don't want to use.

If you're in Moz Analytics open a campaign, at top right you will see a link to Campaign Settings > choose Email notifications >choose save

Hey is there a current issue with the email report settings?

I've gone through every account twice this week to turn off (I just don't need to be notified by email when I spend so much time in Moz).  After turning them off I'm still getting notifications.  I went back into setting today & they are all turned back on.

Depending on if you're using SEOMoz Pro App (classic version) just click on setting & unmark the reports you don't want to use.

If you're in Moz Analytics open a campaign, at top right you will see a link to Campaign Settings > choose Email notifications >choose save