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June 9, 2010

Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Report Impression & Click Drops

There are several webmasters reporting that their search query report, which now shows impressions and click throughs, is showing a major drop in those impressions and click throughs as of June 2nd and 3rd. The reports come via Google Webmaster Help forums.

Yesterday, one webmaster came in and said:

WT Search Queries number of impressions and number of clicks dropped severely on 6/2 and this drop is not reflected in any other stats including Google Organic visits per Google Analytics.

Several other webmasters came in after confirming they are seeing the same thing.

Is it Google Caffeine being live related or something related to May Day or is it just a bug in Webmaster Tools?

Google has not confirmed or denied anything as of yet.

Here is a picture of a site affected by this Webmaster Tools bug named SEO Home blog:

Webmaster Tools Bug

You see that drop off? This webmaster said this has zero correlation with Google Analytics, so it must be a bug.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Update: Google has now confirmed this bug.



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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at June 9, 2010 9:04 AM Comments (5)

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Comments

I saw the same thing with a couple of my sites starting June 1. Went from around 2000 impressions per day to 70ish. Other stats aren't showing that drop and my Adsense earnings are way up for those days. I guess we should not panic. Seems like a bug.

 

Posted by Christina at June 9, 2010 11:34

I saw this too in WebmasterTools.
Before June 2nd, we had 10K impressions / 1300 clicks weekday daily average.
After June 2nd, we have 1300 impressions / 30 clicks weekday daily average.

IMO, Something is broken in Google's tool, because the web server logs stats imply that the amount of traffic did not change (in the ballpark figure of the GWT stats prior to June 2)

 

Posted by ilan at June 10, 2010 03:18

It started on June 2nd.
Impressions decreased by 75%. Must be a bug.

 

Posted by Tom at June 10, 2010 03:58

Same here. Although in my case reporting stopped entirly on June 1st, showing no figures after thet date. Its a great shame as this is a great tool for finding out exactly which search terms rank for site pages. Hope they get it back up soon, Im begining to miss it.

 

Posted by Lochnload at June 10, 2010 06:12

Same here. On all our sites we have the same problem. I don't see a decrease in visits in google analytics so it must be a bug.

 

Posted by Jeroen at June 11, 2010 05:39

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