Traffic Drop in Ezoic Dashboard

geoffjbaker

Hi,
last several days traffic in ezoic dashboard is showing around 50% lower but no such drops show in my website analytics or search console. Has ezoic changed its method of recording traffic in general or has something changed in the way its recording traffic to my site.

Have attached wordpress analytics and search console screenshots. While there are some ups and downs I clearly haven't lost 50% of my traffic in the last 4 days. Any ideas what might be going on?

I did remove ads from a couple of affiliate posts to see if the affiliate conversions increased but that was only for 48 hours and those two pages alone wouldn't account for that big a drop and I put ads back on after a couple of days.

This drop means a drop in earnings such that the recently upgraded premium V level is borderline whether the increased revenue will cover the premium. Also with regard premium - I had set it to pay from earnings yet I seem to be being charged for it. Is this because I have deferred my payouts to get the bonus interest?

cjsmith

geoffjbaker to confirm, are you comparing 'visits' at Ezoic to 'sessions' at Google Analytics? It looks like that option may be 'greyed out' in your screenshot. I do see that there does appear to be some sort of discrepancy however (even allowing for a 10 - 15% difference due to the different reporting methods used).

Typically when we see something like this occurring only on Ezoic's end it is because something has started caching in front of us.

Can you confirm that your caching at Cloudflare is set to 'standard' or 'aggressive' and that you don't have any page rules at Cloudlfare that contradict this? Could you also please confirm that you don't have any of the following settings enabled at Cloudflare: Rocket Loader, Wireless Application Firewall (WAF), Automatic Platform Optimization (APO), Argo, or Workers?

Finally, please could you temporarily share access to your Google Analytics with info122@ezoic.com so that we can take a closer look at the difference? If info122 is full, please try info123 etc.: https://support.ezoic.com/kb/article/how-do-i-grant-read-and-analyze-access-for-google-analytics.

Best wishes,

Chris

geoffjbaker

Hi Chris,
nothing changed for several weeks at cloudflare - well by me anyway. The last change I made was disabling APO since it conflicted with Ezoic during setup (end of june 23). The cache is set as standard. No page rules. I do block from certain countries but that hasn't changed in a long time (eg Russia). I have screenshot the relevant areas. Argo is a paid option that I've never used.

The traffic in Ezoic dashboard seemed higher than my internal analytics up until a few days ago. Eg my analytics for Tues 22nd is 350 visits and 476 views. Dashboard in ezoic said 615. Yesterday I have 283/353 and ezoic has 279. Can't give you google analytics access as I don't use it. Screenshots were from search console which will be slightly less than my total visits you would expect as I get a little traffic from other search engines or direct (10%). I use a wordpress plugin called independent analytics which is GDPR compliant unlike GA.

Digging into the big analytics it seems the drop is down almost entirely to desktop traffic.

cjsmith

Thanks geoffjbaker, that's very helpful. As I understand it then, Ezoic was previously reporting higher numbers than Independent Analytics but is now reporting along the same lines (within 10 - 15%)?

I've never seen Ezoic over-report before, only under-report. And if nothing has changed with your Cloudflare, then there shouldn't be anything else that can cache in front of us (other than maybe Autoptimize - do you use that?) when your site is Cloudflare integrated. It may be worth turning off any other caching you have temporarily to see whether that impacts Ezoic's real-time reporting, just in case something has changed with regards to how those third parties cache content but otherwise I'm not seeing any other of the usual signs that might suggest an issue with Ezoic's reporting and if the numbers are now aligned, I'd be inclined to suggest that everything is currently working as expected. Let me know if you can think of anything else that might be relevant to this case however!

Best wishes,

Chris

geoffjbaker

Well, it could be explained by the core update that started rolling out on 23rd August but my search console numbers aren't down significantly that would suggest its not that. If we assume it was some glitch that was causing Ezoic to over-report what about my point about the desktop traffic that has effectively lost 75%. Was Ezoic multiplying only my desktop traffic by 3 since I signed up? Also presumably the premium calculations are based on those (now incorrect we are assuming) figures so I don't see much chance of the premium charge covering the premium fee. Since I asked to pay the fees out of my earnings why am I being billed for them? Shouldn't they be deducted from my payouts?

JeanPierre

Would you be able to share viewer access to info112@ezoic.com in Google Analytics so that we can take a closer look at this?

If the charge is higher than the earnings, you will automatically be downgraded in tiers and receive a credit. Ezoic makes sure that the charge for premium never goes over the amount earned from it, so these fail safes are in place.
Your premium is currently set to pay ahead, rather than pay from earnings. You'll need to adjust this in your premium dashboard.