CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wordpressgoogle-analytics
John_F
John_F

Reputation: 75

Reasons for sudden, sharp drop in traffic in Google Analytics?

I'd really appreciate any ideas on how to get to the bottom of why my traffic showing in Google Analytics has flatlined almost overnight from thousands to literally a handful of visitors.

The website is: http://cricketyorkshire.com

There's two GA-related changes I've made in the last week, neither I can think would affect things. 1) to uninstall a plugin that shows GA stats in WP back-end (https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/)Google Analytics for Wordpress

The other was to try a filter in Google Analytics to uncover what the 'not provided' keywords were.

I've not changed host or changed anything that should mean such a nosedive and I'm convinced I'm not seeing the full picture as opposed to suddenly not getting those visitors.

Any ideas I can try to decipher this? The traffic slump has only happened in the last three days.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 620

Answers (2)

dchayka
dchayka

Reputation: 1302

As mentioned by Will, you don't have Google Analytics installed (or running) on your site.

Since you mentioned uninstalling an extension from Wordpress that would be your number one and primary reason for losing data. Usually when you install a plug-in and activate your Google Analytics through it that's when javascript snippet from Google is generated and your account values are placed to feed statistics into your GA account.

Solutions:

  1. Install the same plugin and activate it with your Google Analytics account again.

  2. Grab the snippet from Google Analytics admin page and insert it in your Wordpress manually. If you do decide to go this route, I highly recommend researching and creating a plugin "like" snippet otherwise any code placed in Wordpress will be removed next time there's an update.

Upvotes: 1

Will
Will

Reputation: 841

Edit: I just checked your website. I don't see GA tracking on it. You have to include the tracking javascript on it, which is probably what that plugin was doing for you. You can find another plugin or include the GA tracking code manually.

First, make sure that removing that plugin didn't remove the GA tracking code from all pages or some pages. Manually view source, while not logged into WP, on as many pages you can until you're comfortable it's not hte issue.

And also, just to make sure it's not any of the analytics changes you have made I would un-apply any filters or custom settings to your All Website Data view. Then create a new view, and re-apply any filters or settings to that. In general you should keep your All Website Data unfiltered and raw, to serve as a test against any changes you make to your analytics settings.

Other potential reasons could be that you had a lot of spambot viewers, or you removed some content that was getting a lot of hits, or you lost a backlink that was generating a ton of hits. It really requires too much speculation to know for sure.

Upvotes: 2

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