Did you Notice a Drop in Clicks to your Website in August?
The world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is ever changing. Google changes it algorithms constantly. This means that your website search engine rank changes too. Sometimes your website drops in ranking and sometimes it increases in ranking.
On 19 August Google announced another change. This change caused many websites to appear to have quite a significant drop in the number of visitors to a website. It is likely your website was affected by this change. So what does it all mean?
1. What we know
Google announced on 19 August that it would no longer include anonymous (rare) queries when listing the search terms people use to find your website. For example, if you are a plumber, lots of people would use the search query ’emergency plumber’ to find you. This type of search query will still show up with the usual information on the number of clicks, the number of impressions and the average position.
However, more unusual queries, or queries that contain personal or sensitive information will no longer show up. Previously these types of search queries were included in the title ‘Other’. For some websites the number of ‘other’ queries was quite a large percentage of overall queries. This means for some websites there appears to have been a sharp drop in the number of people.
2. Why did Google make the change?
Google states that it made the change to be more consistent. However, it is not clear how omitting these queries makes search results more consistent. Google also states that the changes are to support more features (as yet unannounced) that Google is planning to implement.
3. What you can do?
It is important that if you are concerned about your SEO that you speak to your SEO provider. You need to make sure any change in your SEO position is actually due to this new change.
At Dynamic Websites we provide monthly reports to our clients showing the progress being made with SEO. Our August reports highlighted the Google change. This means all our clients are aware of the reason for any drops in the number of clicks for the month.
Dynamic Websites specialise in small business web design. We are based in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn and provide services throughout Australia. We understand what it takes to get a small business online at an affordable price and with the minimum of fuss. Along with designing websites for small business, tradies and NDIS service providers we provide online marketing services. Our online marketing for small business extends to Google Ads, Google My Business, Microsoft Advertising, search engine optimisation (SEO), content writing and, blog writing.
