The previous month showed that traffic numbers had decreased when the holiday season was over. The traffic numbers continue in a downward trend throughout January, which put my target of 200,000 visitors per month by the end of the year in jeopardy.
Last month the numbers were much lower than the end of 2011, but the traffic numbers leveled off for most of the month, and then began to move upwards towards the end of the month. While there were fewer days in February, the numbers were still fairly low, but were higher than last year.
Traffic Leveled Off
This month I started to become more involved online to help stop the downward traffic spiral that occurred in January. At the same time, I also removed an ad unit that was at the top of all posts. This ad unit was placed beside another ad unit, and with Google’s recent change regarding ads above the fold, I wondered if my posts were being penalized. Google’s algorithm is always a secret, so finding definitive answers is always a best guess estimate.
The traffic started where January left off – lower than the previous months – but the downward trend had stopped. Traffic leveled off for a greater part of the month, and then began to increase slightly near the end. The graph below shows this trend.
Traffic Stats - February 2012
(Click to enlarge)
It is encouraging to see the increase at the end, and I’m hoping to continue this increase over the next few months. In terms of overall visitors, the table below shows the comparison between February 2011 and February 2012.
| Metric | February 2011 | February 2012 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 56,108 | 75,057 | 33.78% |
| Pageviews | 78,393 | 98,082 | 25.12% |
Comparing the year-over-year numbers you can see that, while traffic had dropped, there were still more visitors this year than last year. Unfortunately, the increase in both visitors and pageviews was the lowest since I started reporting traffic numbers, but I’ll take an increase over a decrease anytime.
Traffic Sources
My traffic sources remain similar with search engines still remaining my largest traffic source by far. Direct traffic was still second making referral traffic third. The largest decrease in my traffic numbers was by search engines which has dropped below 70,000 visitors for the first time in many months since hitting over 100,000 visitors a few months ago.
The sources of my traffic is shown in the following chart.
Traffic Sources - February 2012
(Click to enlarge)
I will continue to try and be active online, and will look at ways of increasing both my referral and direct traffic to try and offset my search engine traffic. Of course, I will also look for ways to increase my search engine traffic going forward as well. Perhaps remove another ad unit from the top of my posts. Experimenting is all part of managing a blog.
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Just 2k away from touching 1lac mark. You’ve really done a hard work
Nice post! I know you can make it even if there is decrease. This is just one of challenges in life. You can do it and be bold always.
I’m hoping I can make it, but as you said it is one of the challenges. While it can be hard to see traffic decrease, it is just a matter of not giving up and trying harder.
Very fair amount of traffic, how many articles are your top traffic spread across? Do you have like 5-10 articles with most of the traffic or is it very diverse across many posts? Also, what spot in the referrer is your homepage vs specific pages? Having a high amount of Google Search is wonderful but can become bittersweet if the focused on specific pages that can suddenly rank lower or become less queried for in the future, I had a similar thing were 2 or 3 articles on my site had boosts of 20k specific pageviews across 1 or 2 articles which temporarily inflated my site traffic to over 120k pageviews in a single month, but 4 months later it all leveled off and my traffic seemed to plateau around the 55-60k unique visit / 75k pageviews mark for a few months in a row.
Twitter: dragonblogger
I have been looking into my traffic numbers and was predicting this traffic drop about a year ago. I had a post that generated quite a bit of traffic each day for the past few years. Unfortunately, the post dealt with a device was hasn’t been produced in years, so I knew that eventually the traffic for that post would eventually start to decline. It looks like it has started to happen as the traffic to that post over the course of the last month dropped by over 7,000 visitors from January 2012. That is the one issue with running a technology blog, eventually some posts will become outdated causing traffic numbers to drop.
Wow..that’s awesome traffic.mine has been steadily declining and I’ve been struggling to get up up. It does get difficult when you have too many things happening all at the same time. I really hope things pick up this month. Your stats are inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Twitter: theapptimes
Hi, Adeline. I’m sure things will start to pick up for you. While I’m not at my peak level of traffic, I’m encouraged by the increase at the end of the month.
Hi there Paul,
You have a very nice stat, not sure when I can reach that impressive amount of traffic for my new site.
With the frequent updates of Google’s algo right now, we can only rely on our patience and hard work.
Thank you for your transparancy
Suz.
The continued changes the Google’s algorithm can make it challenging at times to keep increasing traffic from the search giant. Creating unique content, however, seems to be the best way of staying out of algorithm troubles.
Impressive stats buddy ! Your traffic has been improved a lot as compared to the previous year ! Keep it flowing dude !
Twitter: geekytricksblog
I’m glad it has improved a bit over the previous year, but of course, I would always like a better improvement.
Hey Paul,
It’s nice to be on your blog, again.
Good change you got there, huh. Don’t know when I’ll get that much traffic..
Working on it, already.
This post was inspiring for me (improve your stats Mr OddBlogger).
Thanks for that.
Twitter: abhibalani
Hi Abhi. It is a good change, and I’m hoping to continue the trend in March. Only time will tell if it continues, however.