SEO Traffic Takes a Downer on Google Redesign

As I'm sure most web users will have noticed Google has recently underwent a bit of a redesign. With the vast majority of web users opting for the goliath of the search engine world most of us have noticed the change, not least Search Engine Optimisers. Apparently since the change, 43% of SEO's say traffic is down since the redesign. So what exactly could be causing this?



Of course the first obvious answer is that it's their own fault. SEO is tricky business and there is a tendency for fluctuations to occur in the traffic going to a website. However with only an estimated thirteen percent saying they have seen a rise, where is all the traffic going? There are two predominant potential reasons for this based on Google's change being the cause:



Teething Problems



Google's change goes a bit beyond a simple spit shine of the appearance. Its functionality and features have also been substantially re-jigged. The newly developed left hand side bar includes a variety of features designed to make your search a little easier. These include filters to sort results by geography, how recent the web content was created and a variety of other tweaks to hone in on the right site. It also makes it easier to sort by the type of site from blogs to video content. Resultantly it's reasonable to assume that users are taking a bit of time to get used to the new design and this is slowing down the numbers getting to sites as a result. If this is the result then the SEO ninjas have little to worry about as this will be affecting everyone the same.



It would certainly be worthwhile for them to check up on where their organic traffic is coming from. If traffic from other search engines has not seen similar changes then it is probably down to Google.



Face the Changes



On the other hand it could very much be down to Google's ever evolving, always perplexing page rank algorithm. The method through which Google judges a pages merit has seen many changes recently and some of these might have coincided with the redesign. As a result SEO teams will have to get some research underway and find out where Google has made the changes. In some cases Google release information on how to adapt website design for these changes which can be of great benefit to ecommerce sites. Remember, they're not out to hamper sites, they just like them so-so.



Of course this could just be paranoid speculation, but it does seem like the redesign has had an effect. In the mean time Google are asking everyone to give the redesign a chance. A getting to know you sort of thing.