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I Sometimes Stare at Google Analytics Live Stream...
I leave GA's live visitor report up in a corner of one of my screens. I've been doing this pretty much all year long. I could be making this up, but, I think I've found a pattern.
During slow periods, like the early AM hours USA time when there are stretches of time when no one is on the website (site is very US-centric), I will sometimes get click through a referral link. It could be social media, it could be a forum, it could be another website that had linked to us. What it is not is a search engine hit. So I'll get this referral link and have a visitor on site again. And then I'll suddenly get a flash of search engine traffic flood through and a burst of site activity. Then it will die off and we'll go completely cold again.
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I'm starting to wonder if my site is highly dependent on social signals and external link clicks to make Google "wake up" and start sending traffic to us again. Is it possible that our SERPS are very volatile and a "social signal" somehow kicks us back into contention? If so, I haven't noticed it in my own G searching tests nor in WMT...
In fact, now that I type this out it seems somewhat silly. I almost want to delete it. However, I pride myself at being fairly good when it comes to pattern recognition. I know all about sample sizes and statistics (professional poker player) and this, to me, seems like a repeating pattern over time with numerous samples.
Anyone have any thoughts as to what I"m witnessing?
