We analyzed the natural site visitors development of 1,600 SaaS firms to find the web optimization methods that work greatest in 2024…
…and those who work the worst.
On this article, we’re wanting on the firms that misplaced the best quantity of estimated natural site visitors, yr over yr.
- We analyzed 1,600 SaaS firms and used the Ahrefs API to drag estimated month-to-month natural site visitors knowledge for August 2023 and August 2024.
- Firms have been ranked by estimated month-to-month natural site visitors loss as a proportion of their beginning site visitors.
- We’ve filtered out site visitors loss attributable to web site migrations and URL redirects and set a minimal beginning site visitors threshold of 10,000 month-to-month natural pageviews.
It is a checklist of the SaaS firms that had the best estimated month-to-month natural site visitors loss from August 2023 to August 2024.
Sidenote.
Our natural site visitors metrics are estimates, and never essentially reflective of the corporate’s precise site visitors (solely they know that). Visitors loss is just not at all times unhealthy, and there are many explanation why firms might select to delete pages and sacrifice key phrase rankings.
| Rank | Firm | Change | Month-to-month Natural Visitors 2023 | Month-to-month Natural Visitors 2024 | Visitors Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Causal | -99.52% | 307,158 | 1,485 | -305,673 |
| 2 | Contently | -97.16% | 276,885 | 7,866 | -269,019 |
| 3 | Datanyze | -95.46% | 486,626 | 22,077 | -464,549 |
| 4 | BetterCloud | -94.14% | 42,468 | 2,489 | -39,979 |
| 5 | Ricotta Trivia | -91.46% | 193,713 | 16,551 | -177,162 |
| 6 | Colourbox | -85.43% | 67,883 | 9,888 | -57,995 |
| 7 | Tabnine | -84.32% | 160,328 | 25,142 | -135,186 |
| 8 | AppFollow | -83.72% | 35,329 | 5,753 | -29,576 |
| 9 | Serverless | -80.61% | 37,896 | 7,348 | -30,548 |
| 10 | UserGuiding | -80.50% | 115,067 | 22,435 | -92,632 |
| 11 | Hopin | -79.25% | 19,581 | 4,064 | -15,517 |
| 12 | Writer | -78.32% | 2,460,359 | 533,288 | -1,927,071 |
| 13 | NeverBounce by ZoomInfo | -77.91% | 552,780 | 122,082 | -430,698 |
| 14 | ZoomInfo | -76.11% | 5,192,624 | 1,240,481 | -3,952,143 |
| 15 | Sakari | -73.76% | 27,084 | 7,106 | -19,978 |
| 16 | Frase | -71.39% | 83,569 | 23,907 | -59,662 |
| 17 | LiveAgent | -70.03% | 322,613 | 96,700 | -225,913 |
| 18 | Scoro | -70.01% | 51,701 | 15,505 | -36,196 |
| 19 | accessiBe | -69.45% | 111,877 | 34,177 | -77,700 |
| 20 | Olist | -67.51% | 204,298 | 66,386 | -137,912 |
| 21 | Hevo Data | -66.96% | 235,427 | 77,781 | -157,646 |
| 22 | TextGears | -66.68% | 19,679 | 6,558 | -13,121 |
| 23 | Unbabel | -66.40% | 45,987 | 15,450 | -30,537 |
| 24 | Courier | -66.03% | 35,300 | 11,992 | -23,308 |
| 25 | G2 | -65.74% | 4,397,226 | 1,506,545 | -2,890,681 |
For every of the highest 5 firms, I ran a five-minute evaluation utilizing Ahrefs Website Explorer to grasp what might have induced their site visitors decline.
Potential explanations embody Google penalties, programmatic web optimization, and AI content material.
| Causal | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | P.c change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural site visitors | 307,158 | 1,485 | -305,673 | -99.52% |
| Natural pages | 5,868 | 547 | -5,321 | -90.68% |
| Natural key phrases | 222,777 | 4,023 | -218,754 | -98.19% |
| Key phrases in high 3 | 8,969 | 26 | -8943 | -99.71% |
Causal is a finance platform for startups. They misplaced an estimated 99.52% of their natural site visitors because of a Google handbook penalty:
This story would possibly sound acquainted. Causal grew to become internet-famous for an “web optimization heist” that noticed them clone a competitor’s sitemap and use generative AI to publish 1,800 low-quality articles like this:
Google caught wind and promptly issued a handbook penalty. Causal misplaced lots of of rankings and lots of of hundreds of pageviews, just about in a single day:
Because the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar reveals, the offending weblog posts at the moment are 301 redirected to the corporate’s (now a lot better, far more human-looking) weblog homepage:
| Contently | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | P.c change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural site visitors | 276,885 | 7,866 | -269,019 | -97.16% |
| Natural pages | 32,752 | 1,121 | -31,631 | -96.58% |
| Natural key phrases | 94,706 | 12,000 | -82,706 | -87.33% |
| Key phrases in high 3 | 1,874 | 68 | -1,806 | -96.37% |
Contently is a content material advertising platform. They misplaced 97% of their estimated natural site visitors by eradicating hundreds of user-generated pages.
Virtually all the web site’s site visitors loss appears to stem from deindexing the subdomains used to host their members’ writing portfolios:
A fast Google seek for “contently author portfolios” means that the corporate made the deliberate choice to deindex all author portfolios by default, and solely relist them as soon as they’ve been manually vetted and accepted:
We will see that these portfolio subdomains at the moment are 302 redirected again to Contently’s homepage:
And looking out on the key phrase rankings Contently misplaced within the course of, it’s straightforward to guess why this modification was mandatory. It appears to be like just like the free portfolio subdomains have been being abused to advertise CBD gummies and pirated motion pictures:
| Datanyze | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | P.c change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural site visitors | 486,626 | 22,077 | -464,549 | -95.46% |
| Natural pages | 1,168,889 | 377,142 | -791,747 | -67.74% |
| Natural key phrases | 2,565,527 | 712,270 | -1,853,257 | -72.24% |
| Key phrases in high 3 | 7,475 | 177 | -7,298 | -97.63% |
Datanyze offers contact knowledge for gross sales prospecting. They misplaced 96% of their estimated natural site visitors, presumably because of programmatic content that Google has since deemed too low high quality to rank.
Trying on the Website Construction report in Ahrefs, we are able to see over 80% of the web site’s natural site visitors loss is remoted to the /firms and /folks subfolders:
Taking a look at a number of the pages in these subfolders, it appears to be like like Datanyze constructed hundreds of programmatic touchdown pages to assist promote the folks and firms the corporate gives knowledge for:
In consequence, nearly all of Datanyze’s dropped key phrase rankings are names of individuals and firms:
Many of those pages nonetheless return 200 HTTP standing codes, and a Google web site search nonetheless reveals lots of of listed pages:
On this case, not all the programmatic pages have been deleted—as an alternative, it’s potential that Google has determined to rerank these pages into a lot decrease positions and drop them from most SERPs.
| BetterCloud | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | P.c change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural site visitors | 42,468 | 2,489 | -39,979 | -94.14% |
| Natural pages | 1,643 | 504 | -1,139 | -69.32% |
| Natural key phrases | 107,817 | 5,806 | -102,011 | -94.61% |
| Key phrases in high 3 | 1,550 | 32 | -1,518 | -97.94% |
Bettercloud is a SaaS spend administration platform. They misplaced 94% of their estimated natural site visitors across the time of Google’s November Core Replace:
Trying on the Prime Pages report for BetterCloud, a lot of the site visitors loss may be traced again to a now-deleted /academy subfolder:
The pages within the subfolder at the moment are deleted, however by utilizing Ahrefs’ Web page Examine characteristic, it’s potential to take a look at a snapshot of a number of the pages’ HTML content material.
This quick, extraordinarily generic article on “Methods to Delete an Undesirable Web page in Google Docs” appears to be like lots like fundamental AI-generated content material:
That is the kind of content material that Google has been eager to demote from the SERPs.
Given the timing of the web site’s site visitors drop (a small decline after the October core replace, and a precipitous decline after the November core replace), it’s potential that Google demoted the positioning after an AI content material technology experiment.
| Ricotta Trivia | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | P.c change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural site visitors | 193,713 | 16,551 | -177,162 | -91.46% |
| Natural pages | 218 | 231 | 13 | 5.96% |
| Natural key phrases | 83,988 | 37,640 | -46,348 | -55.18% |
| Key phrases in high 3 | 3,124 | 275 | -2,849 | -91.20% |
Ricotta Trivia is a Slack add-on that gives icebreakers and team-building video games. They misplaced an estimated 91% of their month-to-month natural site visitors, presumably due to skinny content material and poor on-page expertise on their weblog.
Trying on the Website Construction report, 99.7% of the corporate’s site visitors loss is remoted to the /weblog subfolder:
Digging into the Natural key phrases report, we are able to see that the web site has misplaced lots of of first-page rankings for high-volume key phrases like get to know you questions, humorous group names, and query of the day:
Whereas these key phrases appear strongly associated to the corporate’s core enterprise, the article content material itself appears very skinny—and the web page is roofed with intrusive promoting banners and pop-ups (a typical speculation for why some websites have been negatively impacted by current Google updates):
The positioning appears to point out a small restoration on the again of the August 2024 core replace—so there could also be hope but.
Ultimate ideas
All the knowledge for this text comes from Ahrefs. Need to analysis your opponents in the identical method? Try Site Explorer.