Guest Traffic Dropping after Upgrade to 4.3.x from 4.2.x

[Fast Lane!]

To start, we have a high traffic site so the statistics here should be fairly reasonable...

The issue....  a big drop off in organic traffic after upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3.

Here is my online user tracking.  Upgrade to 4.3.x was last weekend (~29th July). Blue is all users, purple is guests and orange is members.  The drop off is in purple (guests).

Google Webmaster tools (shows drop off starting the day after upgrade):

Google Analytics (showing referral traffic from search on google dropping off, corresponding to the first graphic showing a drop off in guests):

Here is direct traffic (i.e. registered members directly linking or typing in url)... it does not fall at all (corresponding to the first graphic showing no drop off in members):

The google webmaster tools sitemap index page also shows a drop off in submitted and indexed pages exactly corresponding to the upgrade the 4.3.x.

The search indexed pages drop off is about 10% which corresponds within a few percent to the overall traffic drop on our site (top graphics).  I can't say why this is happening but clearly the SEO or sitemap changes between 4.2 and 4.3 have a high correlation to traffic decreases.

 

 

 

[Fast Lane!]

Here is another graph from IPB tracking the big fall off in guest activity after upgrading to 4.3. 

 

[bfarber]

Are you able to navigate your site as a guest without any problems?

[Fast Lane!]

Yep. Just re-verified. Browsing as a guest seems ok. 

[crmarks]

Consider rebuilding your sitemap from the ACP sitemap section, there is a button. It's possible there were errors in the sitemap being served.

[ric4rdo]

1 hour ago, crmarks said:

Consider rebuilding your sitemap from the ACP sitemap section, there is a button. It's possible there were errors in the sitemap being served.

@Fast Lane! If this solves your problem please tell us. I'm seriously thinking before upgrading to 4.3...

[sound]

On 8/5/2018 at 10:24 PM, Fast Lane! said:

Here is another graph from IPB tracking the big fall off in guest activity after upgrading to 4.3. 

 

 

Seems that since 4.3 some search bots are no longer counted as guests

In useragent.php it looks like invision now filters by the useragent  and ones such as   'ahrefs' , 'baiduspider' etc are no longer counted as guests

Which may explain the drop in guests some are seeing?

 

[bfarber]

17 hours ago, sound said:

 

Seems that since 4.3 some search bots are no longer counted as guests

In useragent.php it looks like invision now filters by the useragent  and ones such as   'ahrefs' , 'baiduspider' etc are no longer counted as guests

Which may explain the drop in guests some are seeing?

 

This could explain it yes

[ric4rdo]

17 hours ago, sound said:

 

Seems that since 4.3 some search bots are no longer counted as guests

In useragent.php it looks like invision now filters by the useragent  and ones such as   'ahrefs' , 'baiduspider' etc are no longer counted as guests

Which may explain the drop in guests some are seeing?

 

 

5 minutes ago, bfarber said:

This could explain it yes

But that would not explain the fall in webmaster statistics, right?

[bfarber]

No, us recognizing a visitor as a bot instead of a generic guest wouldn't affect external analytic services

[Fast Lane!]

Here is a good look at my downtrend in Google organic traffic (search engine referrals).  Note the quick downtrend and drop since 29 July.  This corresponds to the day we upgraded to 4.3.x.  Webmaster tools and Google Analytics show the same.  Out sitemaps remains lower (I'm actually afraid to rebuild as a different site I own, when rebuilding, stopped at having maybe less than 1% of posts added... ticket submitted for over a week now).

Note the big drop in Google traffic over the last 9 days.  Both desktop and mobile traffic see the same dip.

 

Here is Bing traffic... No real change.  To be this indicates an issue with how IPB interacts with Google from 4.2 to 4.3 (either SEO, the sitemap, other).

 

[Fast Lane!]

** Note below is for my other, smaller site... but still shows an issue **

The reason I'm afraid to rebuild my sitemap is because this is what happened on IPB 4.3 when I upgraded and it was rebuilt.  The sitemap contents fell to near zero and wont build. Note I have a ticket open (almost for 2 weeks now) in tier 3 support.  No resolution, yet.

[sound]

maybe the below is a possible factor, read that a few sites have been affected by it...

 

 

[bfarber]

SEO would not be immediately impacted upon upgrading. It would take time for Google to see and respond to SEO-related changes on a site, so I cannot see how upgrading and then noticing lower results on the same day would be related to SEO directly.

Are you sure there is no caching going on or perhaps javascript errors for guests which may be skewing your numbers?