I've noticed this trend on several sites I monitor analytics for. Since the New Year, search engine traffic has been steadily declining.
On some sites despite best SEO efforts it's been steady.
I think the following image offers an explaination.

People are simply searching less!
It could be the economic recession. People do not have time to surf the web, or simply the money to pay for Internet.
So don't be discouraged if that happens to your sites, as every crisis this one will pass and all efforts you made will start paying out.
Continue reading:
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Posted in: SEO
TAGS:april 3rd traffic, declining traffic blogger, declining web traffic recession, declining website traffic, low search engine traffic, search engine traffic recession, why search traffic declining, why traffic declining blogs
Hi! My name is Vladimir Prelovac. I am a computer engineer by profession and an adventurer by state of mind.
8 Comments
When you follow 100 sites in a web log analyzer, the negative trend is obvious.
I have read that the U.S. Presidential election ramped up Internet traffic and online advertising last year and we are now re-adjusting. Perhaps that's a factor.
I experience the exact same problems as the one Vladimir is describing above. Even the image could have been taken from my sites if you make the numbers on the left side signifcantly smaller... :-)
I hope this is de to economic recession and to Google/Yahoo and others punishing me for whatever reason - i.e. using Vladimir's sensational seo plugins :-)
I'm on the way to manage an IT blog in my local language. These days my search traffic tends to be down but I think economic recession is the main cause. Sometime people need to recess, that's all. If They found our content is useful someday They'll be coming back again..
My traffic has been increasing on my main 4 sites as well. One of the top 100 SEO's in the world told me when I was learning keyword research that most of the so called "data" from Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker, of Google SKTools, or Compete has to be taken in relative terms and not verbatim as if it were the truth. Frequently we find keyword tools saying there is zero traffic on a phrase when we know there is traffic. Is social media replacing search..?? That would be interesting to verify. We all use RSS feeds and Alltop and Sphinn, maybe that does tend to make SEO's anyway search less. It's a big world - I personally would bet it is just the economy downturn effecting Competes ISP data.
I think what we are seeing is best described by the HUGE and fast leap with Twitter. I think that Social Media has come of age. People are not searching as much... they head to the S.M. sites! It's been talked and written about a lot. And here we are... And the fact is, I think the economy has instigated the speeding up of use of the social sites. There, people can not only find out immediate news, links, and media opinions, but they can interact with real folks. The S.M. sites not only provide the news, etc... they provide friends for support. The Internet is evolving. Quickly.
My blog is tiny but for the record my search traffic went up 200% from January to February. :)
I do not have this issue at this moment perhaps my site is still quite young and new and the reader base is not that big.