Visitor Stats January to June 2014

If you have read any of our previous updates about the statistics for the UK Traffic News website you will know we have our ups and downs in visitor numbers.

Anyone who publishes a website, just like publishing a book or newspaper, wants as many readers or users as they can attract.

In order to attract as many readers as possible you invest a lot of time and resources into creating interesting or useful content.

Creating an interesting well used website not only involves writing good content it involves design and technical aspects such as coding. It can be pretty complicated and time consuming.

Search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo etc. are constantly changing their search algorithms which decide where to "rank" website pages for their content i.e. where to show them in search results.

Google over the last two years has been changing that search algorithm dramatically and many websites have seen their position in Google searches go up, down, back up and back down often quite dramatically.

Certainly at UK Traffic News we have found this an ongoing battle.

Visitor & Search Engine Stats for January to June 2014

Between January and June 2014 the first six month of the year UK Traffic News had just over 110,000 visitors and users of our website.

UK Traffic News graph of visitors Jan to June 2014

The three most popular search engines in the UK by a lot way are Google, Bing and Yahoo.

During the period January to June 2014 Google accounted for 45.8% of our visitors finding us via a web search, 27.4% from Bing and 24.8% fro Yahoo users.

January to June 2014 Search Engine breakdown

So how does this compare to the same period the previous year?

Comparison Visitor & Search Engine Stats for January to June 2013

In the six months from January 2013 to June 2013 UK Traffic News had just over 182,000 visitors or users of our website.

Jan to June 2013 visitor stats UK Traffic News

The breakdown of visitors finding us by Google, Bing and Yahoo was 72% via Google searches, 13.3% from Bing.com and 13% or fom Yahoo.co.uk.

Jan to June 2013 UK Traffic News search engines

In case you are wondering what about Ask. AOL and other search providers as you can see they make up less than 2% of web searches combined. The three main web search engines account for almost all web searches.

Six Months August 2013 to December 2013

For second six months of 2013 we had just over 112,000 visitors coming almost evenly from each of the three main search engines with Google slightly in the lead. So compared to the first six months of 2014 a similar number of visitors but less coming from Google than came in the following six months.

Google Algorithm Update 6 September 2014

However something radical has changed at Google search on 6 September 2014 it seems, probably another major change to the search algorithm.

Between the beginning of July and 5 September 2014 UK traffic News was featured and seen (impressions) in usually between 3,500 and 12,000 daily Google searches.

In the same period between 100 and 1,000 people a day clicked on us in the search results in Google to visit at least one of UK Traffic News web pages.

On the 5 September 2014 we featured in 6,466 search results or impressions, i.e. seen in search results and of those 6,466 seaches 432 people clicked on the UK Traffic News page link in the Google search to visit the UK Traffic News website. 5 September was probably around the average daily result for UK Traffic News in the whole July to 5 September period.

That all changed however on 6 September 2014 as far a Google search is concerned. On 6 September 2014 we were featured in only 208 searches and 10 people came to our website from Google. That is a massive drop at least according to Google Webmaster Tools. It seems clear to us Google had made another dramatic change to it's search algorithm on 6 September 2014.

In September 2014 UK Traffic News had over 38,000 visitors coming almost equally from Google, Bing and Yahoo. Yahoo bringing around 36%, Google 35% and Bing 28%.

Compare that to August 2014 with almost 60,000 visitors coming 65% from Google, 19% from Yahoo and 14% fro Bing.

These massive fluctuations that we have seen before from Google, and reported before are one of the reasons we recommend using Yahoo or Bing for traffic news related web searches.

Then you check the results during dip periods local newspaper websites and radio stations websites feature in google heavily, but very few with real useful traffic news.

Sadly Google seems to make the BIG assumption that "news" comes from local papers and local radio stations and then goes on the make the assumption the same thing applies to "traffic news", wrongly!

Maybe Google will get it right one day in the traffic (and other sector specific) news sectors? We can only hope as our visitor number would be much higher and remain consistently much higher if Google didn't make that assumption. It is clear from the results that assumption is clearly wrong. Try it and take a look yourself.

Conclusion & Summary

Drawing a conclusion is not easy. At UK Traffic News we keep doing what we are doing but the search engines, and Google particularly, seem to be changing what they are doing dramatically on a regular basis.

In August 2014 we had almost 60,000 visitors a record number of monthly visitors for us at UK Traffic News.

However something radical has happened at Google on 6 September 2014, probably another major change to the search algorithm.

From the beginning of July to 5 September and Google seems to changed things yet again with a big fall in people coming to UK Traffic News via Google fro that day, although number from Bing and Yahoo look more stable. Do people on holiday in August mainly use Google perhaps as the schools went back around that date in September?

Our conclusion is that you cannot worry about Google you just have to get on an publish your website as best you can, making it as easy to use and useful as possible to your users and the numbers will go up and down based on seasons, the Google algorithm and other factors.

The good news, and a good indicator is the number of our returning or regular users steadily increases over time so we must be doing something right, but must do better, always!

If you like what we are doing or interested in sharing your latest traffic news of your journeys to help others avoid the jams? Follow us on Twitter.com/UKTrafficNews or give us a "like" on Facebook. Thank you.

About UK Traffic News

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UK Traffic News is part of our travel and weather information websites.

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