Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 10:34:33 GMT
The e.g. external demand seasonality competitors making mistakes Did I increase traffic by doing the thing I tried to do or did I accidentally improve some other factor at the same time Did this work because of the unique circumstance of the particular clientproject This is particularly challenging for SEOs because we rarely have data of this quality but Id suggest an additional pair of questions to help you navigate this minefield If I were Google would I do this If I were Google could I do this Direct traffic as a ranking factor passes.
The could test but only barely Google could use data from Chrome America Mobile Number List Android or ISPs but itd be sketchy. It doesnt really pass the would test though itd be far easier for Google to use branded search traffic which would answer the same questions you might try to answer by comparing direct traffic levels e.g. how popular is this website. . Missing the context If I told you that my traffic was up week on week today what would you say Congratulations What if it was up this time last year What if I told you it had been up year on year up until recently Its funny how a little context can completely change this.
This is another problem with case studies and their evil inverted twin traffic drop analyses. If we really want to understand whether to be surprised at something positively or negatively we need to compare it to our expectations and then figure out what deviation from our expectations is normal. If this is starting to sound like statistics thats because it is statistics indeed I wrote about a statistical approach to measuring change way back in . If you want to be lazy though a good rule of thumb is to zoom out and add in those previous years. And if someone shows you data that is suspiciously zoomed in you might want to take it with a.
The could test but only barely Google could use data from Chrome America Mobile Number List Android or ISPs but itd be sketchy. It doesnt really pass the would test though itd be far easier for Google to use branded search traffic which would answer the same questions you might try to answer by comparing direct traffic levels e.g. how popular is this website. . Missing the context If I told you that my traffic was up week on week today what would you say Congratulations What if it was up this time last year What if I told you it had been up year on year up until recently Its funny how a little context can completely change this.
This is another problem with case studies and their evil inverted twin traffic drop analyses. If we really want to understand whether to be surprised at something positively or negatively we need to compare it to our expectations and then figure out what deviation from our expectations is normal. If this is starting to sound like statistics thats because it is statistics indeed I wrote about a statistical approach to measuring change way back in . If you want to be lazy though a good rule of thumb is to zoom out and add in those previous years. And if someone shows you data that is suspiciously zoomed in you might want to take it with a.