Why is My PPC Traffic Down 25% This Week?

[Scarbro22]

From 4/15 to 4/22 our traffic from Google PPC is down about 25% across the board. All campaigns and adgroups show the same decrease in impressions and clicks. There has been no significant activity in our account, and after an hour long convo with a Google Rep, there is no solid reasoning for the decline. Essentially they said that it's the content network's fault. Our content network clicks have never been good anyways, so this doesn't explain it.

Anybody else see this trend or have any theories? Sunday is traditionally our best traffic day and to see this decline is alarming. All campaigns are set to accelerated and our budgets are never reached. Our credit limit is also fine. Thanks in advance.

[Shmuel]

Our traffic is down as well. We're only down about 10% impression wise while our conversion rate is pretty steady.

That being said, we always experience a "slump" between sometime in April and August. It may just depend on your industry.

[PPC]

Yes, I see this as well. School vacation week maybe?

[Scarbro22]

Nah, our product is far from the student market. Spring Break has sadly come and gone here.

[PPC]

Originally Posted by Scarbro22

Nah, our product is far from the student market. Spring Break has sadly come and gone here.

Its not students I was thinking about so much as it is people on vacation. Lots of parents were away on vacation last week... and possibly this week too.

[Scarbro22]

That's understandable, but there is no way we lose thousands of clicks and tens of thousands of impressions because of something like that.

[losloslos]

There can a couple other reasons.

1. Clicks could have been coming from someone that was a search partner but no longer are anymore.

2. Google could have changed the way they are matching the words on broad match.

3. Have you positions changed.

4. Google recently switched the top listing from being outlined in baby blue, and now they are in yellow. Before they didn't look as much like ads...now they really stick out.

los

[Scarbro22]

Our positions were the exact same in our leading adgroups. We don't get enough traffic from their search partners for them to be responsible for even 1/10 of the traffic we lost. Even if all of the crazy ideas I've come up with aligned, it still would be a rough spike.

[rustybrick]

Are you guys in the top ad spot?

[Scarbro22]

No. Across our top adgroup, clicks went from 1,229 to 743 while remaining at an avg position of 3.7. That's just one adgroup though.

[Shmuel]

I would be interested in seeing if the same decline continues through the rest of the month. It's not always easy to see a trend when looking at just a week.

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Scarbro22

No. Across our top adgroup, clicks went from 1,229 to 743 while remaining at an avg position of 3.7. That's just one adgroup though.

How do these numbers break out between the Search and Content networks?

[Scarbro22]

The Content Network clicks were 58.97% of what they were the previous two Sundays (when averaging 4/8/07 and 4/15/07 data).

The Search Only clicks were 61.36% of what they were the previous two Sundays (when averaging 4/8/07 and 4/15/07 data).


Those numbers are also very close when running it across the entire account.

In looking at this over the past two days, it just seems to be an unexplainable/unprecendented decline across the board for our keywords. Everything is down equally and I am slowly accepting that this might be a new consumer downward trend for our industry that we are experiencing for the first time at this time of year. Who knows.

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Scarbro22

..... and I am slowly accepting that this might be a new consumer downward trend for our industry that we are experiencing for the first time at this time of year. Who knows.

Interesting. May I ask what industry you're in?

[Scarbro22]

We sell retail and residential shelving. We normally see an increase in residential traffic in the Spring vs. late Winter.

[Mel66]

Has a new competitor come into the search space? You've probably already thought of this... just throwing out ideas right now. It does seem like this should be your busy season.

Melissa

[AussieWebmaster]

The weekend was also the best weather we have had across the country this year.... people may have just went outdoors.... the numbers are about right for that kind of reaction.

When the World Cup was on there was a huge drop in the UK.

While the ideas of losloslos cover the main online possibilities I think there may be some cabin fever impacting web use right now.

When impressions drop then viewers are dropping.... or there are a bunch more people in the space and they have ads that are outperforming you.... first there is the need to spread the impressions to the increased numbers so everyone gets a drop.... then if one or two have great ads they convert to clicks better and impact you as well.

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Scarbro22

We sell retail and residential shelving. We normally see an increase in residential traffic in the Spring vs. late Winter.

Well, the housing market has hit a serious slump in the U.S. Could that be effecting you?

[AussieWebmaster]

I think it could be a combination of all the factors offered. Hopefully it is not long term.... may want to add more sources of traffic to alleviate the drops and possibly gain more market share.