When taking a quick glance at your website traffic report, you might be upset when you see some red numbers. Of course, that is why data analysis is such an important part of digital reporting. Behind every increase or decrease, there is usually a story that led to those changes. This is especially true if the dips or increases are sudden and dramatic. One of the most common dips we have seen for many websites is a traffic dip that is specifically from organic search traffic, and often for blogs that were once high-ranking.
Is AI Causing Organic Traffic To Drop Off
If you do a traffic sources report and notice that your organic traffic is specifically dropping off compared to other sources of traffic, like paid or email, you should look through a filtered landing page report. You may notice that core pages on your website, like the homepage, service pages, or product pages, are performing more or less the same. Meanwhile, content-heavy blog posts might be dropping off suddenly. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have lost your rankings or that people have suddenly stopped searching. Instead, it could simply be that people are reading the content of your article in a different format. AI Overviews and Google’s AI mode can use content from other articles to answer questions, meaning users can read rephrased content from your website without needing to go to your website.
How Can You Tell If AI Search Is Causing You To Lose Organic Traffic?
The easiest way to understand how your website is performing on Google Search is with Google’s tools. Google Analytics 4 can be used to break down traffic sources and show you which pages are losing traffic. If you notice that your traffic loss is happening primarily at a blog level, you can take your research a step further with Google Search Console. This tool can tell you how often you appear for specific queries and keywords, your average ranking, and how often you see clicks. If AI overviews are preventing traffic from your website, you can expect to see similar numbers in terms of impressions and average position, but stiff decreases in clicks and click-through rate.
Is Losing SEO Blog Traffic A Problem?
Not necessarily. While it may seem alarming at first to see a sudden drop in website traffic, you might notice that key events or conversions are staying more or less the same. Likewise, you may notice an increase in your average session duration. Many articles have short session durations and do not lead to conversions. Users enter your site, read for their answer, and leave. The types of users who are looking to do business with you or are more likely to go to your website and your core pages. An AI overview is simply moving your blog traffic to the search engine results page experience. It is similar to the Google My Business listings or the click-to-call extensions on Google Ads. As time has gone on, Google has added more interactivity to its search engine results pages. At the end of the day, if a user is specifically looking for your product or service, they will either get the opportunity to reach out to your business on the SERP or be directed to your website. But if the user is just looking for quick answers, they may read your content over on Google instead of on your website.
At the end of the day, ranking in the AI overview is as important as ranking in traditional search. By providing Google with valuable content, you can increase positioning in search results so that when someone is looking for a business that can help them, you are where you need to be.
Rank Higher In Traditional Search and AI with Our Agency
Our agency has helped countless businesses develop strategies that are not just about increasing traffic, but about thoughtfully making sure our clients rank for the right searches and the on-page and off-page experiences can easily convert users into new business. For modern digital strategies, contact Boston Web Marketing.