Earlier this month, Google launched their new design to all and even though many hate it Google is sticking with it and pleading for searchers to stick with it also. But from an SEO's or Webmaster's perspective, is the new design bad?
Some are reporting that the new design is sending fewer referrals and less traffic to their web site. Now, that can be a huge deal for a site that gets a lot of traffic from organic Google search results. Back then, the report came from WebmasterWorld, yes a thread but also the site said they are suffering with the new design. So I decided to see if it is widespread or specific to WebmasterWorld.
I ran a poll asking you if your Google referrals have changed since the redesign. With over 200 responses, I decided to post the results. In short, over 43% of you said your referrals from Google have declined since the redesign, whereas another 40% said traffic has not changed at all since the redesign. Only 12% said their traffic is up since the redesign, I was honestly hoping to see more saying traffic was up.
Here is the pie chart:
I do find it interesting that so many people said their traffic is down since the redesign, but at the same time so many others said it was not down. What concerns me, like I said above, is that not as many people said their traffic was up. Is this related to the Google MayDay update, it shouldn't be, because this is dependent on rankings being the same, but traffic not.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This was scheduled to be posted today. I am offline today and scheduled several polls for the days I am offline. I am back Friday, May 21st.
