What Causes My Google Search Console Traffic To Spike Up 800%?
My website practically "died" a few times. It first died maybe around late 2022. And then it revived around Sep 2023 and died again in Mar 2024 (6 months).
After 9 months from 18 Dec 2024, traffic started to spike and it has gone up in unprecedented ways for this site.
By no means this website is high traffic, but it is nice to see the "pulse" coming back. :p
And it spiked by approximately 800% to date from an impressions point of view.
Below shows the GSC traffic of my website for the last 16 months for context.
What Caused the Website Traffic to Spike?
It is very interesting that the website traffic spike shortly after a few events. However, I am unable to pinpoint what may be the actual cause.
Last 3 months
Here are some eventful moments pertaining to my website:
- On 15 Dec - I accomplished my 100th blog post. Traffic started to grow from 18 Dec. Could it be that reaching 100 blog post for a website matters to Google algorithm?
- On 16 Dec - I removed the backlink in Wealthy Affiliate Profile because I think it is not relevant to my niche. In part, I also thought of testing out this hunch that I have. Because, vaguely, when I last put my website links in my profile, I think my traffic may have dropped.
- On 19 Dec - I detected that 3 websites have been copying my entire recent blog posts and repost on their websites without my knowledge. However, this incident has been happening for at least a month plus based on their posting date of my blogs in their sites. So it is unlikely to explain the traffic surge. On the contrary, traffic could have been stolen from my website. In one of my stolen blog post, the infringing website ranks on page 1 while mine didn't appear anywhere.
So I think it could be either point 1 or point 2 that helps me recover the traffic. Or, it could be sheer coincidence. I'm not sure if there was any Google algorithm update that favours my website.
What Happens Now With This Search Traffic Spike?
More traffic, more clicks. I started to get more subscribers in my email list for the past few days.
It actually gave me a "happy problem" associated with the email signup but I guess that's not relevant to talk about here.
I'm grateful anyways to Google, anything, or anyone else that has helped me to see that many of my blog posts started to appear on google search again. Previously, almost all blog posts were indexed but never appear in any page. Last few days, almost all the blog posts, at least the ones I've searched, are appearing on page 1, hence contributing to the impression.
How long will this traffic continue? I don't know, maybe it will drop back to the floor tomorrow. But the last few days have been encouraging. Hopefully it will last at least 3 to 6 months before something happened again?
The chart looks like a stock price movement. Quite fun to look at.
Whatever it is, I have plenty to do and to keep going.
Have a great day ahead.
Richard
