More page 1 rankings, more estimated traffic - but less actual visits to the site???

**vitamediagroup** · 6 August 2020, 2:24 am

So, I'm in a very weird situation.

Over the last 2 months, we have been almost double our page 1 rankings month on month. Not just on page 1 of Google, but also just in general we've been growing massively in rankings overall.
Ahrefs also estimates our traffic (and traffic value) should be continously, solidly, going up.

But it isn't. In fact, the last 2 months we've been at a bit of a standstill with very little growth, or no, growth in terms of organic visitors.

I can't figure out why. Google Trends doesn't show a drop. We're ranking higher, and for more keywords. Ahrefs estimates our traffic should be considerably going up.

Any suggestion on what I should be looking into?
I've worked with SEO for around 15 years now, and I don't remember ever running into this little issue before.

**spinmaster** · 7 August 2020, 3:15 am

Ahrefs changed its formula for estimating traffic. I have the same situation or even worse. I'd say that the best way for this task is to try to use GA and use your own formula for estimate traffic.

**baldidiot** · 7 August 2020, 5:12 am

Look at the search impressions and positions in GWT - how have they changed?

**vitamediagroup** · 7 August 2020, 7:18 am

Originally Posted by baldidiot

Look at the search impressions and positions in GWT - how have they changed?

Up, amazingly!

We started going up just this Tuesday again, so it might have been seasonality that wasn't apparent in Google Trends. It's the absolute only reason I can think of. Every other metric went up. It was very confusing.

**ddm** · 7 August 2020, 10:25 am

Originally Posted by spinmaster

Ahrefs changed its formula for estimating traffic. I have the same situation or even worse. I'd say that the best way for this task is to try to use GA and use your own formula for estimate traffic.

interesting. got a source to read more on this?
thanks

**Tex Holdem Questions** · 9 August 2020, 2:42 pm

Ahrefs has never been close to accurate for my site's traffic. It's always grossly underestimated the amount. I've had hundreds of visitors a month on a term they estimate gets very little traffic. That's been my experience anyway.

Are your page titles and posts captivating? Are the meta descriptions useful? If not, this might be why you are missing visitors.

Consider someone googling "VWs from 1995". The number 1 result may write about it but the snippet may be a description of volkswagen or cars in general. A searcher is more likely to scroll to the 2nd/3rd result, basically the most appropriate looking page to find their answer, based on the preview google is providing.

If I were you, I'd audit all the pages that seem to be ranking high but getting little traffic and reviewing the titles and descriptions. Since you're not getting the traffic anyway, it won't harm you to make a change.

Hope this helps.

**wonderpunter** · 10 August 2020, 8:52 am

depedns what your `page 1 rankings are... free bonus? no deposit etc? its about quality over anything else

**baldidiot** · 10 August 2020, 12:56 pm

So logic dictates that GWT must be showing a drop in CTR then? How much are we talking?

In ahrefs are the keyworks showing up as any serp features? Those dang image packs can muck with your ahrefs position stats.

**Lee1** · 10 August 2020, 2:39 pm

I don't mean this to come across as me sounding like a d**k, but if you have worked in SEO for 15 years, you should know better than to assume 3rd party data is correct.

This is how they calculate the estimations - https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/...e-calculate-it

Going by the way they calculate it, any site could have a high traffic estimation just by totalling all the keywords, creating a formula for each position and looking at the CTR drop off as you go down the SERPs.

The source of truth should be in your analytics/search console.

**ddm** · 10 August 2020, 5:29 pm

Originally Posted by baldidiot

Those dang image packs can muck with your ahrefs position stats.

^ this.
Post your domain name OP - let's have a look!

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