Monitor Traffic Changes with Squarespace's Anomaly Detection Alerts
Traffic alerts monitor significant spikes or drops in your website traffic, providing insights into what caused these changes and how different marketing channels are performing. These alerts create annotations on your traffic data analysis chart.
How Traffic Alerts Work
Traffic alerts use anomaly detection (machine learning) to identify statistically significant traffic changes by comparing current traffic with the previous 28 days of data. Changes must be below or above 99% of the typical traffic distribution to trigger an alert. Sites need at least 28 days of traffic history for the system to establish patterns.
Viewing Traffic Anomalies
Anomalies appear as pulsating exclamation points on the traffic data analysis chart. To view them:
- Open Analytics panel and select Traffic
- Choose date range from dropdown menu
- Click alert icons for details
Understanding Anomaly Details
When clicking an alert icon, you'll see:
- Anomaly date
- Traffic volume during the event
- For spikes: Top viewed pages and their traffic percentage
- For drops: Pages with decreased volume and their percentage
- Contributing traffic channels
Using Anomaly Data
Use this information to:
- Identify successful traffic generators
- Understand which channels need attention
- Test different strategies to improve traffic
- Make data-driven marketing decisions
Providing Feedback
You can provide feedback on each anomaly:
- Click thumbs up/down under "Was this helpful?"
- Add optional comments
- Click Send
This feedback helps improve the accuracy and usefulness of the anomaly detection system.
For best results, regularly monitor traffic alerts and adjust your marketing strategy based on the insights provided. Test different approaches to find what works best for your specific audience and content.
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