site stats dropping, thoughts on reasons why

[bbolte]

I host a site for a client, http://www.wingsoverkansas.com. It's pretty narrow in it's focus, but doesn't do to bad. Generally, on average, around 14,000-15,000 unique visitors with about 35,000 page views a month (at least according to AW Stats). August stats were down about 1,000 visitor but the page views were near averages. September looks to do about the same drop in visitors but might have a good size drop in page views - well below average.

Client is panicked, but I don't think I'll panic until end of October - if it continues. August wasn't his lowest month on stats, there was 1 other that did lower earlier in the year, the monthly stats do look like a roller coaster.

However, that still doesn't answer the question on why it might be happening. I don't see anything significant in the number of referrers from the search engines or a drop in spidering from them. but I'm at a loss. Anyone have any ideas on possibilities?

or for that matter, does anyone have any thoughts on what we should do to reverse a possible trend?

[Chris]

More data is needed. Do you have Google analytics? Its worth installing for archival data alone. How old is the site also? It could be a normal fall drop if the site is less than a year old and this could just be your first year dealing with it.

Have search engines lists or referrals changed at all?

[bbolte]

I don't have analytics, but the site is several years old (around 8 I think). I don't think that the refs have changed all that much, but I'll need to do some more analysis to get the actual numbers. I'll look through the stats again and see if there's something I missed.

[bbolte]

looking through referrer logs, here's what i'm seeing:

Google and Yahoo! refs are pretty consistent, September looks like it will be within the averages for these 2. MSN however has bottomed out. In July MSN refs were nearly triple what they had been through the previous months. In August, MSN dropped below the average of the months prior to July. There is a small spike from Yahoo! in July as well. July had the highest search engine referrals across the board.

Referrer from other sites have been declining since June - May had the highest site referrals for 2007.

Here's something else, this August's visitor stats are higher than the last 2 previous years, by over 1,000 unique visitors. But page views were 2nd over the 3 years.

So, I'd like to figure out why July was so high. Not sure what people were looking at. That might be more difficult to figure out...

[Chris]

If PPV goes down you need to look at internal causes. Any navigation changes? Hosting changes? Things of that nature.

For your MSN referrals, what rankings did you have before? IF you had like 10th and are now 11th, it isn't a big change rankings wise, but traffic wise that'd be huge.

Also it could be as simple as MSN Adding more advertisers under your keywords so distracting from your natural listing.

[bbolte]

OK, thanks Chris. I'll have to do some more digging. Most of this I left to the site owner, so I don't have much of the SE ranking info - don't know if he does either.

[bbolte]

Oh and the site structure or hosting hasn't changed in 4 years.

[KLB]

Has the loading time of your pages changed? For instance have you changed or added graphics such that the total download requirement for the site has increased? Increasing image sizes can slow down the loading of pages and directly reduce the number of page views per visit as people don't like waiting for pages to load and will quickly go elsewhere. Even as more and more people get broadband, keeping a very small download "footprint" is becoming more and more important.

[bbolte]

Has the loading time of your pages changed? For instance have you changed or added graphics such that the total download requirement for the site has increased? Increasing image sizes can slow down the loading of pages and directly reduce the number of page views per visit as people don't like waiting for pages to load and will quickly go elsewhere. Even as more and more people get broadband, keeping a very small download "footprint" is becoming more and more important.
Not really, it's something I stress to the site owner frequently. However, one of the frequent feedbacks he receives on the site is to have more photos with the articles. Aviation enthusiasts love to see pics I suppose. But I'm with you there, in general, I keep the pages as lean as possible.

Which brings up a question concerning Google Analytics. I've been hesitant to add it in for that reason. Other "external" stats scripts always seemed to put too much of a load. How does Analytics perform? And then, sometimes it seems like Adsense even drags things down...

[KLB]

I put GA very last in my HTML code (just before </body></html>) this mitigates most loading issues it might cause. In general I don't have many issues with it slowing down my pages, but my pages load very quickly to begin with.