It is goodbye to the year of 2014 and welcome to the new year of 2015 and here comes my last Google Analytics quarter report of 2014. In these reports, I tell you about my traffic for the last 3 months and the trends I have seen in this period. You might find it interesting to compare it with your own numbers to see if you have seen some of the same trends in your traffic that I have on my traffic.
Traffic Types
- Search Engines: 50.12%
- Direct traffic: 29.23%
- Social traffic: 12.35%
- Referring Sites: 8.02%
- Email and Other traffic: 0.28%
Compared with Q3 of 2014 my numbers is almost the same when it comes to share of the different traffic types. My referring traffic has dropped a bit, but my Social traffic has increased instead.
Organic traffic (Search Engines Only)
- Google: 88.89%
- Bing: 6.91%
- Yahoo: 3.48%
- Yandex: 0.37%
- Ask: 0.17%
When it comes to organic traffic Google is still the king of search, but Bing has increased a bit compared to Q3 of 2014.
Top 5 Referring Sites
- stumbleupon.com
- techtutorials.net
- lifehacker.com
- obrazky.cz
- social.technet.microsoft.com
Almost the same as last quarter. The site: semalt.semalt.com did not make it to the Top 5 this quarter. Obrazky.cz is new on the list. As far as I can see, it is some kind of search website from the Czech republic. Never heard of it before.
Top 10 visitors by Country
- United States
- Denmark
- India
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Germany
- Canada
- Pakistan
- Bangladesh
- France
My visitors is mainly from the same country as in Q3. In fact top 8, is exactly the same.
Key Numbers of Q4 2014
Overall, my traffic of Q4 has been a bit disappointed. Normally December is my best month when it comes to traffic, but that was not the case this year.
- Number of Visits to my blog: 6931 visits Vs 8464 visits in my Q3 report (-15.75%)
In the last couple of reports I have shared my bounce rate, but I simply don’t trust the numbers Google has reported for my blog the last couple of months. My bounce rate has always been between 70%-80%, but suddenly from one day to another, it dropped to about 2% and I have no clue why.
Conclusion of my Traffic Report
To sum up, I have seen a drop in traffic to this blog in the end of 2014. December is normally the best month all year, when it comes to traffic, but not this year. I can’t really see any reason for the traffic drop. It looks like it is in all parameters my traffic has dropped. Anyway, I will just have to keep on writing better posts in 2015. It is not the first time I have lost a lot of traffic on this blog and I will keep on working to strike back 🙂
If you have any questions, please drop me a comment below. I will also love to hear how your own blog has been doing in the end of 2014.
Nice job, happy new year.
I saw a drop in both my site this year, but I think a lot of that was lack of updates 🙁
I need to kick my self into gear and post on a regular basis.
Happy new year Jason. Glad that it is not just me that has been struggling with it last year. I guess we just have to keep working to improver our blogs.
StumbleUpon seems to be a good bringer of Traffic for Blazing Minds as well, great stats Thomas
Hi Karen
StumbleUpon really is a got source if you want to drive more traffic to a blog.
I’ve had it several times where a site has suddenly had a traffic hike from StumbleUpon, certainly worth using it for post promotion 😉
HI Thomas,
Are you using the Google Analytics plugin from Yoast? I noticed a similar reduction in bounce rate and I’m wondering if the plugin is a little buggy at the moment.
Well, hang in there Thomas. I’m sure the traffic will start to pick up soon.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Ileane
Glad to hear I am not alone with this issue. I am not using any plugin for Google Analytics at all. I have entered the code manually to my header in WordPress. My bounce rate drop 2nd November 2014 and has been very low since. It has not been over 8% since. Do you still have a reduced Bounce Rate Ileane?
Yes, mine has been around 2% but I’m using the plugin. Not sure what the issue is but it would be nice if it turns out to be true
Hi Thomas,
Seeing your analytics report, it encouraged me to use stumbleupon for bringing traffic. I was not even thinking about SU to bring traffic, I think I was missing this great traffic source.
hey great stuff man,, i am not sure if stumbleupon give you lot of visitors but it surely it provides you quality customers who are interested in your topic,,
good going Thomas , please share the secret behind 50% search traffic with us. I want to know because I have 7% search traffic from google only . and I want to grow like you .
Hey Thomas, nice stat! but I have a suggestion: about 60% of people use their phones & tablets to connect to internet, why don’t you install a responsive theme? this will have a great impact on your blog SEO.
I also want to read your posts without paying a fortune to my internet provider!
That’s pretty impressive that you’re getting so much traffic from direct visits. How do you go about accomplishing that?
Great article!
Hi Mel
I am not sure, but I guess that a lot of people have bookmarked my blog 🙂
How do you get so much StumbleUpon traffic? Are they looking at blog posts or videos? I once had a video site and Stumbleupon sent me a ton of traffic, but very little converted. Interesting post. Google really loves your site!
Hi
To be honest I am not sure why StumbleUpon is working that well to me. I am not doing much other than sharing some of my posts and Stumble upon others posts in there. I do think that StumbleUpon work best with technology posts. Not sure I would be able to get the same among of traffic in other categories.
Hi
Your direct traffic is good! December is bad for my sites as well in 2014. What is percentage of traffic you get from Stumble?
Regards,
Thank you. StumbleUpon is about 12% of my overall traffic for the last couple of months.
Great traffic to your blog and I also wonder how can you get traffic from StumbleUpon. I’ve submit a lot of pages to it but not get much traffic as well.
Hi Alize
You might also have to interact with other users and leave comments in there. It is just like with Facebook and twitter. You need to to follow people and make them follow you back to reach out and get their attention, to make StumbleUpon work for you. See more info here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/blog/find-friends-faster
Thank you for your share tips, I will do following that way and see if I could gain more benefits from StumbleUpon.
Great report. You certainly has some good quality stuff as it is represented by the number of visitors. I want to know how does any website can attract U.S visitors.
Hi
I don’t do anything special to attract visitors from the U.S. I do however know a lot of bloggers from the U.S. on Twitter and Facebook. I guess that have something to do with it, when they share my stuff on Social Media from time to time. I do also comment a lot on others blog including blogs located in the U.S. In the end I guess it all has to do with writing relevant, interesting posts on your blog.
Thanks for your transparency.I am trying to use GA nowadays and learn something from your experience.
Realy great job, yaar.i thinkl you are on the right track