I've Lost 33% of pagevieuws and 20 % visitors

Collapse
X
 
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • hababam
    New Member
    • Apr 2010
    • 15
    • 4.0.0

    [Forum] I've Lost 33% of pagevieuws and 20 % visitors

    Since 1 update my forum from 3.8 to 4.0.3 I have lost of....

    Click image for larger version

Name:	naamloosxu.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	49.1 KB
ID:	3715688
    • 204,938 Visits Previous: 252,827 (-18.94%)
    • 3,383,373 Pageviews Previous: 5,070,602 (-33.27%)
    • 16.51 Pages/Visit Previous: 20.06 (-17.68%)
    • 20.80% Bounce Rate Previous: 21.18% (-1.81%)
    • 00:17:00 Avg. Time on Site Previous: 00:18:08 (-6.20%)
    • 30.02% % New VisitsPrevious: 31.49% (-4.67%)

    Click image for larger version

Name:	naamloos1h.jpg
Views:	1
Size:	27.5 KB
ID:	3715689

    and when i look at Traffic Sources Overview isee this:
    • 41.44% Direct Traffic Previous: 39.01% (+6.21%)
    • 20.25% Referring Sites Previous: 11.22% (+80.45%)
    • 38.31% Search Engines Previous: 49.76% (-23.00%)
    I see that my forum has lost a lot of visitor bij search engine google..

    Have someone the same problem and what can i do ??
    www.hababam.nl
  • hababam
    New Member
    • Apr 2010
    • 15
    • 4.0.0

    #2
    I'm TRULY dissapointed and regret every hour I have upgraded to vb4.
    www.hababam.nl

    Comment

    • Yellow Slider
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2004
      • 421

      #3
      That's awful, thanks for posting, I'm not going to upgrade for the mean while.
      vB should find the problem, something must of caused it.

      Comment

      • Dody
        Senior Member
        • Aug 2004
        • 1896
        • 3.8.x

        #4
        Did you change the forum's URL structure?
        while(true){
        if(
        $someone->needsHelp() && $i->canHelp()) $post->help();
        if(
        $i->findBug()) $post->bug();
        }

        Comment

        • Miko
          Senior Member
          • May 2002
          • 136
          • 4.0.x

          #5
          You changed the URL structure (based on the site in your signature), is to be expected in the short term.
          Pages will get re listed in time... or you could use the old vbulletin url structure and have all of your pages indexed as before.

          Comment

          • vivamexico55
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2005
            • 1018
            • 3.0.7

            #6
            Hi, same thing happened to me, I posted about this in the Licensed customer feedback forum. I'm not going to post the details but it was in some thread around there.

            Yes, it was probably the change from Standard URL Structure to "Friendly URLS". In my case I lost about 40% of visits, plus a few more from people who didn't adjust well to VB4 due to using IE6 or little things like that. There was a theory that it might have been because of the Google Caffeine update to their search engine, but I do not believe that as other of my sites continue with the same pageviews. Only the VB4 site experienced this problem.

            I can tell you I did that near the release of VB4 in December/january.

            It has been 4 months now and I'm still at 50% of visits that I used to get. They said I'd regain the visits in about 6 months, but I don't believe it, I think my google ranking is gone for good. My distribution of visitor sources stays pretty much the same (70% search engines, 20% direct, the rest by linked sources).

            In retrospect, it seems like a dumb mistake on the admin's part, but to be fair there was no warning about the potential risks, no help in the options, no manual, and I assumed VBulletin would deal with redirects or whatever "SEO techniques" were necessary to prevent something like that. I believe changing just this option cost me about, I dunno, maybe 40-60,000 visits per month. 80,000 on a good month.

            So, yeah, do NOT change URL structure unless you're sure of what you are doing.

            Comment

            • TheElf
              Member
              • May 2005
              • 69
              • 4.0.x

              #7
              When you change your URL structure, Lots of the old links pointing to your page can become outdated, and this can influence your pagerank, but on the long run you should recover and get extra visitors.
              EnerlaNET / Elven Library forums (Roleplaying games, Gaming, irc, Cartography) - Owner / Admin
              Cartographer's Corner blog (Maps, Cartography Tutorial, Campaign Cartographer related advice) - Author

              Comment

              • vivamexico55
                Senior Member
                • Mar 2005
                • 1018
                • 3.0.7

                #8
                Originally posted by TheElf
                When you change your URL structure, Lots of the old links pointing to your page can become outdated, and this can influence your pagerank, but on the long run you should recover and get extra visitors.
                How "long" is this "long run"? As I said, I'm 4 months in and no sign of recovering.

                Comment

                • hababam
                  New Member
                  • Apr 2010
                  • 15
                  • 4.0.0

                  #9
                  Originally posted by vivamexico55
                  Hi, same thing happened to me, I posted about this in the Licensed customer feedback forum. I'm not going to post the details but it was in some thread around there.

                  Yes, it was probably the change from Standard URL Structure to "Friendly URLS". In my case I lost about 40% of visits, plus a few more from people who didn't adjust well to VB4 due to using IE6 or little things like that. There was a theory that it might have been because of the Google Caffeine update to their search engine, but I do not believe that as other of my sites continue with the same pageviews. Only the VB4 site experienced this problem.

                  I can tell you I did that near the release of VB4 in December/january.

                  It has been 4 months now and I'm still at 50% of visits that I used to get. They said I'd regain the visits in about 6 months, but I don't believe it, I think my google ranking is gone for good. My distribution of visitor sources stays pretty much the same (70% search engines, 20% direct, the rest by linked sources).

                  In retrospect, it seems like a dumb mistake on the admin's part, but to be fair there was no warning about the potential risks, no help in the options, no manual, and I assumed VBulletin would deal with redirects or whatever "SEO techniques" were necessary to prevent something like that. I believe changing just this option cost me about, I dunno, maybe 40-60,000 visits per month. 80,000 on a good month.

                  So, yeah, do NOT change URL structure unless you're sure of what you are doing.
                  the same numbers here !!
                  mine is still dropping, any idea what to do ?? back to vb3.8 ?
                  www.hababam.nl

                  Comment

                  • anthonyparsons
                    Senior Member
                    • Mar 2005
                    • 2597

                    #10
                    VB4 software has nothing to do with you dropping traffic. I have tested this since release, and its not the software, but how any person implements it upon their site. If you change any software that creates a dramatic change to your site, which means a dramatic change to how the search engines view your site, you could expect a positive or negative shift, depending on what you have changed. If you had a forum only and now have the suite and using the CMS, which means you have changed your homepage to your site, then you just changed a search engines possible interpretation of the site. You can get it back by using Google tools by ensuring the page is being understood for the primary topic it should. See Google webmaster tools for all these basics. If you changed the URL structure, you could encounter significant change, depending on what you used and the change you performed. There are many factors for this. I have now loaded VB4 personally onto over 10 sites for people and not once has anyone suffered any type of significant shift in traffic. In fact it is now quite the opposite for, as the redirects are correctly working for 4.0.3, and the latest one since this release is now showing a 31% increase in traffic moving from the standard URL to full rewrite URL's.

                    Websites have always been a roll the dice method. Even when you know what you're doing, things can still go wrong, let alone if you don't understand the consequences of change. Upgrading previous 3.x version over one another never introduced significant change to the look or content on each page. VB4 significantly changes most pages content, the order that content is delivered to search engines, etc. Just delivering your page content in a different order, ie. tabled design vs. CSS will do exactly that, will change how your page is interpreted by Google.

                    People seriously need to get off this bashing of VB4 software as an excuse for a drop in traffic, as its not the software itself that does this, its the change of upgrading an existing site to a completely different architecture that does this. If you changed from vb to phpbb, you would suffer a massive drop due to URL changes, page content changes, etc, and vice versa. Vbulletin are not responsible for your online marketing matters now, which is what some are trying to blame them for.

                    I am all for putting blame where it rightfully belongs, but I am not in the business of blaming someone or something for an act that is not rightfully theirs to own such blame. If you run a website, then it is your responsibility to understand any implications of changing your website, associated impacts, etc. If you had your existing site redesigned, being a layout change, you would endure rankings fluctuations as a result, if significant change is made to influence how the content is delivered to Google.

                    Lots of websites are going to see change as Google continue to rollout caffeine over this year onto all of its global datacenters. It intentionally targets old content for removal from rankings, giving new and fresh content higher precedence. It is in limbo at the moment, though still exists on some DC's, depending where in the world you are accessing. Obviously this would not be the issue though if you just installed VB4 and then your traffic immediately changed from the next day. You need to look at what changes you have made to your site, as mentioned above, as part of the upgrade process.

                    Comment

                    • anthonyparsons
                      Senior Member
                      • Mar 2005
                      • 2597

                      #11
                      I just looked at my latest one that I did two weeks ago, and Google analytics has it up 30.23%. It was quite stable, though a couple of tweaks in the right direction, upwards it goes. Again, not the software, but the implementation.

                      Comment

                      • vivamexico55
                        Senior Member
                        • Mar 2005
                        • 1018
                        • 3.0.7

                        #12
                        Originally posted by anthonyparsons
                        I am all for putting blame where it rightfully belongs, but I am not in the business of blaming someone or something for an act that is not rightfully theirs to own such blame.
                        I totally agree man
                        Originally posted by anthonyparsons
                        If you run a website, then it is your responsibility to understand any implications of changing your website, associated impacts, etc. I
                        So it IS my fault n_n

                        I'm gonna disagree, there should've been some information about the effects of changing URL structures somewhere, in a manual, even in the little question marks, but what's done is done. I mean, I did that 4 months ago, and now it's still happening to people, so really, how about some warnings or something? The software may not be doing the change on its own, but it's definitely not helping.

                        If I'd seen ANYTHING that said "Hey, this might have either a POSITIVE or NEGATIVE impact on your daily visitors, we can't tell!" you bet I'd have left it alone! I've never claimed to be an SEO expert, professional web admin, or anything. It's a hobby for me, albeit an important one.

                        People seriously need to get off this bashing of VB4 software as an excuse for a drop in traffic, as its not the software itself that does this, its the change of upgrading an existing site to a completely different architecture that does this.
                        I honestly don't see any bashing.

                        Anyway, thanks for your posts, even if I disagree with your point of view, you've been very helpful.

                        Comment

                        • vivamexico55
                          Senior Member
                          • Mar 2005
                          • 1018
                          • 3.0.7

                          #13
                          As an addendum to my previous post, I checked it right now and it still just says
                          "Enabling friendly URLs can increase your site's ranking in search engines and can be useful for users to understand the URL's that they follow.
                          Standard URLs:
                          showthread.php?t=12345etc..."

                          Add the blog posts about how awesome Friendly URLs are, what do you expect me to believe when I make this change in my website, being a regular user, not a power techie SEO wiz? I expect more of these complaints in the future.

                          Comment

                          • anthonyparsons
                            Senior Member
                            • Mar 2005
                            • 2597

                            #14
                            I do understand and empathise with people on this, though no software company can know or reasonably expect to know the outcome of each individual upgrade. I have not seen any developer issue such a warning, a footnote, etc stating such a thing, as the effect can go either way, though the majority would see no change. Software development companies build software, they don't advise on search engine politics. Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, etc... none of them advise such things, they simply outline what a feature does, or its intended impact.

                            If you update a forum with a million posts, enabled friendly URL's, it could grow by 50%, decrease by 30% or have no impact whatsoever... but vBulletin nor any software manufacturer could possibly, or reasonably be expected to know, each installations specific aspects. What you put on your website is 100% up to you, not a software development company. If you run a website of any kind, you should look into things that may or will affect search rankings. The place to do that is within such an appropriate community, though this is not an SEO community. Marketing anything is about highlighting the positives, not sitting on the fence providing the pro's and con's.

                            If something goes wrong with your website in conjunction with Google, then you seek out the source, being Google: http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/webmasters/

                            Comment

                            • is_it_me
                              Senior Member
                              • Apr 2008
                              • 546

                              #15
                              Sorry to hear some people are having problems regarding site traffic, but to put forward the other side of things I upgraded my live site to vb4 on 1st March and just look at these average daily unique visitor figures for this year so far:

                              Jan – 188
                              Feb – 246
                              Mar – 598
                              Apr – 961


                              testing 1..2..3

                              Comment

                              widgetinstance 262 (Related Topics) skipped due to lack of content & hide_module_if_empty option.
                              Working...