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I am running a WordPress site. Up until October 1, the site had a blog running at the root level of the site. On that day, I moved all the blog files into a directory so the WordPress blog would be showing at www.mysite.com/blog. I added htaccess redirects for a lot of the old page structure, so that for example, if someone visits www.mysite.com/2012/blog-post-name, it will redirect the user to www.mysite.com/blog/2012/blog-post-name. I have checked the Real-time tab on Google Analytics and see that it is still counting pageviews on the redirected pages.

I am noticing, however, that the pageviews and sessions are approximately 150-200 less daily than the same time period last month. When I compare some stats between certain sets of dates you can see the differences.

Pageviews
Sunday 10/18/15 and Sunday 9/20/15 - 827 vs 1070
Saturday 10/17/15 and Saturday 9/19/15 - 737 vs 984 Friday 10/16/15 and Saturday 9/18/15 - 973 vs 1105

Unique Pageviews
Sunday 10/18/15 and Sunday 9/20/15 - 727 vs 910 Saturday 10/17/15 and Saturday 9/19/15 - 542 vs 806 Friday 10/16/15 and Saturday 9/18/15 - 803 vs 938

Sessions
Sunday 10/18/15 and Sunday 9/20/15 - 682 vs 837 Saturday 10/17/15 and Saturday 9/19/15 - 526 vs 708 Friday 10/16/15 and Saturday 9/18/15 - 627 vs 800

Users
Sunday 10/18/15 and Sunday 9/20/15 - 667 vs 807 Saturday 10/17/15 and Saturday 9/19/15 - 507 vs 657 Friday 10/16/15 and Saturday 9/18/15 - 592 vs 705

Is there any reason you can see why there would be such a significant drop? What steps can I take in trying to track down where the count is being lost?

I appreciate any help and tips!

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2 Answers 2

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Generally, moving content isn't advised (even with redirects). It may have shaken up your rankings a bit, but the fastest solution that I can think of would be to create a new sitemap. Have one for your site and then create a new one for /blog and submit it to Google in the Search Console (aka Webmaster Tools). Make sure it stays up to date. Also, double check your permalink configuration in Wordpress.

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  • Yeah, that was it. I was able to determine that the organic search traffic was way down, and then realized that I had accidentally added a new robots.txt file that was blocking Google from indexing the site. I updated the robots.txt file and uploaded a new sitemap file, but it says it is still blocked by the robots.txt file. I assume it is still referencing the old one? I used the robots.txt tester tool and it seems fine there, but I assume they reference didn't versions.
    – zeckdude
    Commented Oct 21, 2015 at 20:41
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In case anyone else is looking for a way to figure out why your traffic is down, check out this helpful article: http://www.analytics-ninja.com/blog/2013/10/where-did-my-traffic-go.html

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