9 replies to this topic

[maleman]

Greetings people,

The past few months my commercial site's referrals from SEs are down about 20% compared to last year. Keywords are ranking literally the same as last year. I just am not getting as many referrals from SEs the past few months.

Has this happened to your commercial site? Would this is related to the recession/depression?

[Jill]

Would this is related to the recession/depression?

Could very well be.

Would depend on the market.

[1dmf]

It's hit a couple of our sites, one in holiday let business, so definitely the current 'terror' situation and the recession has more or less killed that business. Luckily there are always locals to rent long term to, less ROI due to lack of tourist money, but less maintenance, so it's not all bad

The parents work in the playground industry providing council's with play areas, equipment and safety surfacing, incidentally, they have noticed an considerable increase in web traffic and sales to private nursesries and households, but the local government money has dried up.

So there is definitely a decline due to the recession in many business sectors, but in anything, there is always one mans loss to another mans gain, so some will do rather well from the recession, while other will lose everything.

The usual key to weather any financial storm is to diversify and persevere, which is what one of our suppliers has had to do to stay afloat. Which is good because now their product base has doubled, so if they come out the otherside from this recession, they will be able to build a stonger company with a much larger product base.

Which we can then sell to our customers and thus gives us a greater product base and wide customer scope.

Hence the new 'Rubber Bollards'

[maleman]

I'm hoping that potential new customers aren't going under because of the "economy". I don't think they're are looking to buy like they were a year ago (for whatever reasons). The sluggish traffic certainly isn't from lack of SE exposure.

[Hans G.]

I've been doing SEO on a few sites, and despite increases in relevant SE rankings and traffic, actual leads (people who want to purchase product/services) is considerably down. What I have noticed is that, for the service company, we've had a dramatic increase in job inquiries. Our results read something like this:

Relevant Traffic: +15%
Actual Leads: -20%
Job Inquiries: +30%

[Michael Martinez]

I think the recession has had an impact on Web traffic in many ways. Some sites have benefitted from it and some sites have been hurt.

[madams]

1dmf

t's hit a couple of our sites, one in holiday let business

Tell me about it...

The exchange rate from £ - € is hurting me to!

[Bradley]

I've been lucky to have gains in both traffic and revenue during the last year. That being said, you know one of the most important lessons I learned here that has been reinforced during this recession? The value of conversion optimization.

[1dmf]

The exchange rate from £ - € is hurting me to!

yup, it's more or less 1-1 now.

Man our pound sucks, even the Thai Baht is @ 55-1 , when it is usually 60-70, ok it fluctuates stupidly depending on the season, but its been @ 55 for 6months+ , that's unheard of! well it was until now.

[Malok]

Arguably a lot of businesses are seeing lower revenue. Of course there are always a few exceptions like bankruptcy attorneys, credit counselors, etc that I'm sure are probably seeing record years.

How much your business is affected is likely dependent on the affluence of your target market. Discounters like WalMart seem to be holding their own, while a lot of high end luxury places (restaurants, etc) seem to be struggling.