Traffic Continues to Plummet!

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   hclpdposted 3 years ago

   Anyone else noticing the trend? Traffic for the last few days has been dismal.

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      lobobrandonposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Mine is a consistent 40% below last year, a similar trend since January. I don't see a new drop on my account.

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      SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      My traffic dropped. It's been steadily dropping, but from August to September it took a hit. Hoping it's a fluke. I've been wanting the numbers to go up all year, so it's disappointing that they've fallen... again.

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      Sam Shepardsposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I seem to have lost another 10% on the remaining traffic this week after already having lost 35-40% around July.

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         hclpdposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Same. I've been constantly losing traffic for the last few months. In fact, I've lost a bit more as of today.

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            PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Overall, mine steadied 3 or 4 weeks ago and has been creeping up a few percent since then. However, there's a lot of variance between how the different niches are performing. That could explain the inconsistency between hubber experiences, I don't know.
            
            I'm still way down on where I was from Jan - May.

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               hclpdposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               Yeah. I think that's the case as well. Since my Hubs are confined to 2 niches, that's why I'm seeing a drastic drop.

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      NateB11posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Traffic is worse than it has been recently but a bit improved from last year. What has dropped is CPM. I usually suspect a relatively normal fluctuation is occurring when this happens.

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      SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I had an almost 15% drop in views in one week. September came in like a wrecking ball.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 3 years ago

   I have more than one account and they often vary. The overall trend for me is that it's creeping up slightly. I believe the increase is due mainly or entirely to seasonal factors (return of school and college students etc.) and the reality is that it's stagnated at around 40% down.
   
   I write on a wide range of topics though, and the niches are not all performing the same, I believe. I've not investigated in detail, but last time I looked some like Dengarden were down, whereas some of the others were doing slightly better.
   
   I personally believe that Amazon hubs are having a negative effect and the niches with more of them are doing worse, but I don't really have the data to prove it, so take that as speculation. That said, my Amazon income is creeping up after the most dreadful period I've had since the crashes during the "suddomain period" 9 years ago.

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   bravewarriorposted 3 years ago

   According to my GA account, my traffic, session duration is up and bounce rate is down, all positive signs. Some days are better than others, but overall, traffic is up. I think this is a direct result of the leading videos having now moved to the right rather than follow the reader down the page.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 3 years ago

   My main earners are seasonal and I usually see a drop during summer/fall until it picks up again around Dec, but the summer decline was bigger than the drop I saw for the same time period last year. I have seen an unexpected increase the last few days though. I'm not sure what is causing it, but I double checked traffic sources and it is coming from Google. I was worried it might have been due to social media shares and it would be short lived, but I'm hoping the views continue to increase considering they were organic searches.
   
   I'm more worried about the dismal cpm's and Amazon sales. Even when I did see more traffic at the beginning of this year I was still making less than previous years when I had less views. It's taking me more views to even get close to what I was making the last few years, which is very disappointing.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I know how you feel, I've begun to give up on CPM's ever getting as a high as they did a few years ago. The main hope for the site seems to lie in high traffic levels and sorting out the Amazon issues.

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         theraggededgeposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         I wonder if HP dropping Adsense was a good thing or not.

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            PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Re: Adsense. On a personal level, I have never reached the $100 payout in a single month, despite having a bunch of other blogs beside HP. I always made my money from Amazon on here before Hub Ads came along.
            
            I suspect that's also true for the site. Hub Ads reduced their reliance on Amazon, so can only be seen as a good thing.

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   eugbugposted 3 years ago

   There seem to be non-stop Google updates. Reminds me of a road I cycle on, no original tarmac, just patches. Traffic had started to improve last week as kids began to return from summer vacation, but now it's ramping down again.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not experiencing that at the moment. Traffic flatlined for me in mid-August and is now slightly up. I think it's likely explainable due to the differing fortunes of the niches. Some are doing better than others, or maybe it would be more accurate to say: "less worse".
      
      I had another look on SEMRush. As usual, it seemed to give a reasonable indication of the fortunes of niches relative to each other, but other than that, it doesn't seem to reflect my personal reality at all.

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         Shesabutterflyposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         I was wondering about different niche site performance as well, but I think my experience has not been the same as other's in that regard either. Most of my traffic comes from Owlcation (not academic related) and surprisingly my one and only Letterpile article. Pethelpful has become my third most popular niche.
         
         The site that hit me the worst with traffic decline has been Delishably. My old number one article lost half of it's traffic over the last year and a half, and the others have been slowing down too.
         
         In regards to Adsense I rarely used it. I made payout once in the almost 9yrs I've been here. I found the Ad program worked much better for me, but I've definitely given up on cpm ever being what it use to be. Do you notice they vary quite a bit from day to day? I'm noticing changes of up 3 or 4 dollars every other day sometimes. I use to be able to expect they would be relatively similar for the whole month, but I have not seen that this past year.

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            PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, Delishably has been hit terribly! I've lost a lot there too, both Hub Ad and Amazon earnings! I have an account with lots of cookery articles.
            
            You can see a big fall on SEMRush.
            
            https://www.semrush.com/analytics/overv … ype=domain
            
            There are only a few niches that I haven't written for. I'm someone who likes a lot of variety, which isn't great for earning as it's best to stick to one niche, but that's how I am!
            
            Anyway, I've not analyzed all the niches, I know that Turbofuture is doing okay and Dengarden isn't, but I've not probed too deeply. I feel powerless to be honest.

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               SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

               Looking at the Delishably chart, I have a thought. I imagine when the pandemic hit more people relied on recipes rather than restaurants. By about April-May, 2021 people were getting the vaccine and mask mandates were thrown out the window. People started socializing more. They stopped relying on recipes as much.
               
               From June 2016 to December 2019 the growth was happening at a steady rate. During the pandemic, the growth practically doubled. Now it's coming down, but I'm not sure if it will stay there. The United States is by and large the most traffic for it, and I think it's a guessing game as to what trends people will have going into the fall and winter. People are tired of the pandemic, but worse mutations of COVID could be a game changer.

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                  PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

                  One could create a "real-world" narrative for each niche. But when there are sudden shifts on specific days that coincide with algo changes, that's by far the likeliest explanation.
                  
                  If you pick a narrower time period (rather than 2 years) on SEMRush, you can see quite clearly that there was a sudden drop right at the end of May/start of June.
                  
                  Millions of people just don't suddenly change their minds like that within a tight timeframe of a few days without a stronger and more specific reason.
                  
                  End of May/start of June is also the time that many other niches, not concerned with recipes, experienced great changes in traffic.
                  
                  There was no "real-world" event to prompt such a sudden change at that specific time, in my opinion.

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                     SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                     I only meant it as a possibility for Delishably. I definitely think the numbers overall are sagging, and from my very armchair understanding of it. . . it seems like Google is a big part of the equation.
                     
                     I believe CPMs have overall been down across the board on websites and not just HubPages. Companies don't necessarily want to spend money on advertising right now when they've got other big issues to solve.
                     
                     I've had a lot of fluctuations on HubPages that are tied to the pandemic, but I don't suspect that's the case for everyone.

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                     Shesabutterflyposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                     I can't see the chart you posted above and can only go off my experience, but I agree with you.
                     
                     If I look at GA traffic stats for my other Delishably articles outside the one I know has been hit hard I see a slightly different trend, but most of my articles have varying degrees of decline in traffic starting in 2018-2019 well before the pandemic.
                     
                     Some articles have less than 5% change up or down, while others are experiencing anywhere between 30-60% drops. I'm noticing a bigger drop for cookie/baking articles and a lesser change for all other main/side dishes.
                     
                     I do find it interesting though if I compare 2019-2020 for the whole year verse only until Sept I see different stats. I initally had a 9% increase from Jan-Sept, however if I pull up Jan-Dec I have a net loss of 5% traffic. Not nearly as bad as the 11% loss I saw from 2018-2019 though.

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                        SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

                        My main niche was (still is) dating. My earnings were more than cut in half once April 2020 rolled into town. It’s gone up since then. I imagine some niches got hit harder while others may have actually gained some traffic since 2020. Maybe others weren’t affected.

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   JerryFisherposted 3 years ago

   A decade ago like a lot I used to make websites purely to earn from Adsense, until Google figured out what was going on. Google recommended no more than 2 Adsense spots on the home page. Just having a look at my main article and I counted 25 ads. But they only appear in the first half. If a reader was still there after having to trip over them they'd get a clean break for the last half. Strange. I wonder if Google is picking these multiple ads as not being a great user experience and penalising HP?

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      SerenityHaloposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I think that’s likely. I would hope HP is trying to strike a balance of ratio of ads to views.
      
      I usually write on desktop and then reread on my phone to edit. Occasionally if things quickly move to Discover, the video ad that follows you becomes a real pain. Especially since it doesn’t close easily. HP could definitely work on making the user experience better. If not I think Google will push it down.

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   eugbugposted 3 years ago

   Does anyone have articles that seem to be immune to updates?
   I have a "Top 100 Cool Science Facts......." guide on which traffic has been increasing since September last year. None of the Google updates, even the major one at the end of May/beginning of June had any affect. It only gets 70 views peak per day mid week, but somehow it must have satisfied Google's ranking algorithm. Maybe because of the large number of text capsules with H2 titles?
   
   

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      Shesabutterflyposted 3 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not knowledgeable about updates and algo changes, but I have noticed one article has not been affected and one other one has been doing much better the last year after taking a huge dive several years ago (my assumption was because of the move to Letterpile verses any specific algo update).
      
      One of my seasonal articles (on Owlcation) has been thriving for the last year. I had a larger traffic spike in April (main peak for this article) in 2020, but otherwise the rest of the traffic was either very similar or higher this year. I did notice a few larger upticks a few weeks ago and again last week I think it was. I thought maybe it was being shared on social media, because it was short lived a day or two max, but it was all coming from Google.
      
      The article I have been most surprised about and pleasantly so, is the one I have on Letterpile. I initally didn't think it was worth keeping since I couldn't get it moved to a better niche, but I never took the time to actually remove it. I'm glad I kept it. This past year it has been doing so much better. It gives me some hope that Letterpile for whatever reason might be finally getting a bump up. From Jan 2020 to now it has an increase in views by a whopping 59%! The views were so miniscule before that I'm still not seeing as many views as I had prior to the move to Letterpile, however this has definitely given me some hope things could still turn around for this one.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      In general, older articles (more than 5 years) are often more robust for me. I'm guessing that's because they've picked up a bunch backlinks over time. There's likely other metrics too that Google's gathered over the years that saves them.
      
      When the update first hit, an entire account of mine was unaffected for a (relatively) long time. It was outperforming everything else and giving me hope. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time and Google eventually screwed it over like the others.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      The other thing I think about sometimes is that it's easy to focus on the hub. But how it does in the SERPS depends as much on the competition.
      
      If it's in a competitive field,  a slight change in how it's viewed by Google will result in a big fall. If the competition isn't strong, it may hold its ground.
      
      I guess what I'm saying that the essence of Google is ranking rather than absolutes, but it's easy to forget that.

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   Jodahposted 3 years ago

   My traffic has been on a slow gradual climb on average over the last few months.

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   eugbugposted 3 years ago

   Mine is slightly above the level for this time last year. I think an update on Saturday helped. Another update yesterday put an end to the upwards trend, for the moment anyway.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 3 years agoin reply to this

      Google seem to be constantly tweaking. Any "recovery" could be long, painful, and incremental in its manifestation.
      
      Of course, the ideal would be that there's a full recovery right before the run up to Christmas.

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         Kenna McHughposted 3 years agoin reply to this

         Up and down with some Amazon sales.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 3 years ago

    My traffic continues to edge up. This includes my DIY home fixes, which don't tend to be affected much by seasonal factors. It will take a long time to reach former glories at this rate though!

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