World Wide Web Crisis? Options

[fabrizio]

Hello here,
I don't know if this is the best forum where to post my issue, but I think yes.

Well, since February, or better, since the Yahoo!'s move from Google to Inktomi, I began to notice a little but progressive decrease of the traffic (and consequent sales) on my website. Now, after about 5 months, my traffic is still going down. This is the first time a such issue happens after 5 years where my traffic and sales constantly increased.

After a long research I visited alexa.com where anyone can have trafic information on any website and I discovered that the most part of the sites are experiencing the same traffic decrease: Google, Amazon, AOL and may others are experiencing the same issue since February (you can try yourself starting from alexa.com and entering any site to have statistics of it). In the other hand, there are sites that are always constant like Yahoo! or MSN (Sitepoint has been also enough constant in traffic) and others increased (friendster.com and others). But the most part experiences my same issue.

What can be the cause of a such decrease? Maybe I have misinterpreted the Alexa's data or is it a coincidence?

Any idea and speculation (as well personal experiences) on this issue is very welcome!

Thank you in advance for your attention.

Sincerely,
Fabrizi

[Randy]

Don't trust those traffic numbers as Alexa Fabrizi. They are merely guesstimates since they obviously don't have access to the real stats. Only stats the stats of people who happen to have the Alexa software installed, which isn't something the normal population would ever agree to install. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by looking at those IMO.

As a for instance, just for fun I looked at what they reported as trends for 3 of my sites, two well established and one that is slightly over a year old. All of them were reported to be trending down in Alexa and that is very wrong. According to Alexa all three sites are down between 10% and 30%. Reality is that the traffic (and sales) are up between 15% and 600%.

Analyze where you traffic is coming from, and not coming from. Look for seasonal trends. Try to get a guage on how many people are searching for what you offer. Look at your competition to see if it's become more rigorous. Look at the snippets that appear for your top search phrases and compare that to closely competing sites.

There are a lot of things that can affect traffic numbers. Even if your ranking positions haven't changed, clickthru rates based upon the title and snippet that shows can often have a rather drastic effect.

[eklages]

I agree with you Randy. Every once in a while we have a client that comes across the alexa "site ranking" tools and it is always tough to explain the inaccuracy of the numbers. I don't know why they even offer such tools when they are wrong 99.9% of the time! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/ranting.gif)
Looking at your real data (via webtrends or whatever you use) and analyzing patterns there, that is what will help you make your pages better.

[Jill]

Or more likely that more people have installed anti-spyware software and which has alerted them to the fact that the Alexa toolbar is spyware, and so they have uninstalled it.

If less people are using the Alexa toolbar, the overall number of visitors to all sites in general will appear to decrease.

But it's not the visitors that are decreasing, just the visitors who have the Alexa spyware toolbar installed on their browsers.

[BobetteKyle]

Any idea and speculation (as well personal experiences) on this issue is very welcome!

Welcome to the forum, fabrizio. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

Yes, ignore Alexa (especially for creative-type sites like sheet music). The World Wide Web is very much alive.

[Sidenote: Alexa is useful for measuring relative traffic trends of direct competitors. Also, the "people who visit this page also visit" section can help with research. The numbers themselves mean nothing, but some useful patterns might emerge.]

Anyway, as Randy and Elizabeth suggested, analyze your traffic for clues about what's happening. Besides the ideas they brought up, think about what else might have changed.

Generally, search engines are only one piece of the traffic pie (If SE's account for all traffic to a site, it's time to get some other marketing programs in place! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ). So, in addition to looking at search engine related causes you may want to look into...

- Outside links. Did you lose any links that were bringing good, pre-qualified traffic to the site?

- Offline marketing programs. Was something you were doing before - but not now - driving traffic to the site? Or maybe something you are doing is becoming ineffective and you need to come up with some fresh programs.

- Industry trends. Has something happened to make your whole industry trend downward, so there just aren't as many people interested in buying sheet music?

- Substitutes. Is there something your previous or potential customers are doing instead of downloading/buying sheet music?

- Competitors. Did a new company start, a previously non-competing company add sheet music to it's offerings, or has an existing company stepped up it's marketing?

If you treat it kind of like a mystery, looking at clues to get at the root cause, you are sure to get some ideas for turning the traffic around.

Good luck!

[kology]

One more thing to look for with the competition. While you're ranking may have stayed about the same (you didn't mention this), is it possible that sites in SERPs near your site have changed something?

If one has a better call to action in the SERP, then they may be getting more of the SE traffic.

There are so many variables you can't just look at the SE. If you offer your product through other venues (ie. Toll-free telephone, physical stores etc.), if yes how have those traffic numbers/sales been affected.

[AttilaDHun]

To also dog on Alexa, I currently have a web site that has 120,000 unique visitors per day and the Alexa numbers are showing the site in a serious downtrend.

I have completely stripped all Alexa related products off of any browser I use, just not reliable information.

[fabrizio]

Thank you very much folks for all your kind advices.

I have some more information:

- I understand of the bad reliability of the Alexa system and I guessed the same Jill mentioned about "If less people are using the Alexa toolbar, the overall number of visitors to all sites in general will appear to decrease.", that could be true but how can you explain that Yahoo! and MSN are always at the same rank and other sites like sitepoint.com risen up such as Friendster.com and others? That's a strange issue... unless the Alexa information is completely random.

- I thought Alexa information could be true simply because its overall data correspond exactly to the overall data of my own server-logs since mid-Febrary. I analyze my server-logs information every week and with big attention since 1999 when my business started. Now I am in a strange situation where my keywords positions in the natural as well PPC search engines are always in the same position (1 less, 1 more), my referrals websites and search engines are always the same but the traffic coming from them is decreased gradually and proportionally since mid-February. I know only that since that date Yahoo! dropped Google fro Inktomy, but my rankings there are maybe better than in Google! So, here is the deal...

- I know very well my competitors and they are always the same, they descriptions in the search engine results are always the same and there are not new competitors around... nothing changed!

- My off-line advertising is always the same, I didn't increased it but I didn't decrease it neither...


Forgetting Alexa, anybody had a similar decrease of business in the last 5 months?

In the meantime I am looking further in depth following all your advices and suggestions.

Thank you again very much.

Sincerely,
Fab.

[BobetteKyle]

but how can you explain that Yahoo! and MSN are always at the same rank and other sites like sitepoint.com risen up such as Friendster.com and others?

Yahoo and MSN have the highest volumes so they have no upside ranking potential. Also, their traffic volume is so huge it's going to tough for most other sites to overtake them.

The more specialized, lower traffic sites are going to change in rank for several reasons. One major reason is the data can be statistically unreliable (another way of saying "pseudo"-random (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). According to Alexa (http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html):

In addition to the biases above, the Alexa user base is only a sample of the Internet population, and sites with relatively low traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa due to the statistical limitations of the sample. <snip>Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes.

In addition to the sample size being too small for statistical significance as explained in the quote above, it is also not representative of the overall online population. I suspect their user database is "tech-heavy", which tends to skew the results even more.

IMO, you are beating a dead horse killing yourself over Alexa data. That same time could be spent more effectively elsewhere.

This post has been edited by BobetteKyle: Jul 12 2004, 06:50 PM

[BobetteKyle]

Forgetting Alexa, anybody had a similar decrease of business in the last 5 months?

I seriously do not think the answer to your traffic drop is an overall decrease in Web usage. Other, more universal statistics do not support that theory. Example: according to Nielsen/NetRatings, comparing Q1 2004 to Q1 2003 (U.S):

- Number of Web page views have risen 26%,
- monthly per-user sessions have risen from 50 to 53, and
- average time on the pc has risen from about 48 minutes to about 53 minutes:
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_040525.pdf
(see page 2 of the report, statistics are per month)

Personal experience shows an increase as well. Percent change in unique visitors, 2004 vs. 2003:

Feb + 66%
Mar + 99%
April + 45%
May + 30%
June + 46%

This post has been edited by BobetteKyle: Jul 12 2004, 06:53 PM

[OldWelshGuy]

HI fabrizio,

as the saying goes, when you have discounted everything else as not possible. What is left, no matter how impossible, is the answer.

Something people forget is that search trends alter, language moves on, and, if nothing else has changed like you say ie no new competitors, no changes to competitor sites. then, ALL that is left is that people are either

1) no longer interested in your product.
2) using a different search term to find your product.

I know this might sound odd to you, but something like a movie release can start a new way of searching using a different phrase. Have you carried out a complete round of Keyword research recently? Go into Google and see what new synonyms it is throwing up that were not there previously, either using adwords stuff or the '~' operator to look for synonyms, look at Overture searches etc.

If nothing has changed in the SERP's around you, then something has changed outside of that box. Has a company blitzed music sites with banner ads? is there a round of email running? Is this search term down on an Overture check?

If none of these has changed, then all that I can think of is the two statements I made earlier.

OWG

[fabrizio]

Thank you very much BobetteKyle for your information and link to Nielsen/NetRatings stats. That's a reliable source, I know it.

Concluding with Alexa, I am aware that reliable data can arrive only from big sites, in fact I checked statistics of big sites like: latimes.com, apple.com, google.com and other of the same size and any of them presents a decrease of traffic since mid-February. Exceptions are Yahoo! and MSN and other minor sites I mentioned above.

Anyway, ok, probably my situation is just a coincidence with the "biased/pseudo" information I found on Alexa (thank you BobetteKyle for you suggestion...).

Thank you even to OldWelshGuy: yes, I can guess that my offer can be the cause... but I have new information I collected yesterday night:

- Since February the traffic decrease a little (as I already stated earlier)
- Since February the single sales of my product INCREASED instead a little
- Since February the subscriptions to my most expensive package, the yearly Membership of $37.75, is decreased as the traffic.

So my question is: how does it's possible that single sales increased? Just some information to speculate more and to guessing: maybe people prefer to "economize" by purchasing single products for less instead to purchase a more expensive Membership?

Thank you guys and girls for all your time and ideas, it's really appreciated.

Sincerely,
Fabrizio.