Significant Drop in Yahoo/Bing Organic Traffic

[dwrdvns]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to see if anyone can share insights or experiences regarding a significant drop in organic search traffic we've encountered for one of our clients.

We've observed a decrease of about 1,000 sessions month over month, primarily from Yahoo, and to a lesser extent, Bing. What makes this situation particularly perplexing is that our Google organic traffic has remained stable during the same period.

Diving into the data, we noticed that traffic from Yahoo spiked significantly in late August/early September, with a 475% increase compared to the prior period. However, this spike was followed by a sharp drop. Moreover, Bing Webmaster Tools shows a 54% decrease in clicks and a 29% decrease in impressions from September 21 to October 20, compared to the previous period. It's worth noting that during this time, our client also increased their paid search spending.

I'm eager to understand if others have experienced similar traffic fluctuations from Yahoo/Bing without any corresponding changes in Google traffic. Any insights, potential causes, or recommendations on how to address this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I don't track Bing/Yahoo at all so I have no insights to share on that.

Did they increase their paid search spending on Bing specifically? If so, do you use UTMs on the URLs in the ads? That would be one way that you can see if it's ads that are triggering incorrectly as organic in GA4.

 

[Invalley]

That is interesting. Have you tried delving into the specific keywords that were generating that traffic and their search volume? Did the website lose SERP rankings, or did the traffic just decrease? This may be less a case of the specific website being hurt, and more something structural in relation to Yahoo or the traffic-generating keywords. In fact, if your rankings didn't go down, this is the only explanation I can think of.

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@dwrdvns - You mention traffic but not rankings. So, I'll add to @Invalley's comment:

Bing powers Yahoo search. So, if rankings dropped on Bing, they dropped on Yahoo. And, of course, a change in Bing/Yahoo rankings is independent of Google rankings.

So, if your Bing/Yahoo rankings dropped, your Bing & Yahoo traffic would decline, while Google traffic would stay the same. Check the Bing Webmaster "Average Position" metric.