Traffic Decrease Since Rebrand Theme

Technical Q&A
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Topic summary

A Shopify store experienced a severe traffic drop—from 20 orders daily to zero—following a November rebrand that included a name change and new theme. The owner hired a developer but traffic hasn’t recovered after six months.

Key technical issues identified:

  • robots.txt file was never re-added to the site
  • Multiple broken links went unaddressed (fixed 2 months ago, no improvement yet)
  • Sitemap only recently submitted to Google Search Console
  • Console showing validation errors requiring attention

Community recommendations:

  • Implement 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones
  • Check for meta noindex tags and canonical issues
  • Verify branded search terms—traffic loss may stem from brand name change
  • Compare current top-performing keywords with pre-rebrand data
  • Announce the rebrand across social media to recover branded search traffic
  • Consider hiring a technical SEO specialist

Current status: Owner is working through Google Search Console errors and using Booster SEO app (premium). One commenter notes that post-rebrand traffic fluctuations are normal during Google’s recrawl/reindex period, advising patience while systematically addressing technical issues.

Summarized with AI on October 26. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

We rebranded our old store, changed the name, theme etc in November and we saw a significant traffic decrease which still has not recovered. We did this through a private developer in Manchester who previously worked for a large agency in Manchester so appeared to have all the knowledge etc.

We contacted them numerous times to say it has been 6 months (in terms of SEO kicking in ) and still no difference in traffic.

We have been doing some research & realised the robots.txt was never inputted back on the site & are aware this can effect traffic.

There was lots of broken links which were not readjusted which as now complete - I did this 2 months ago but still not seen any change in this traffic wise.

I have just submitted my sitemap to google and working my way down validating the below issues…

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We have gone from up to 20 orders a day to 0, huge traffic decrease.

We use the BOOSTER SEO app and on the premium plan.

We never used to do paid ads etc, so nothing has changed from this front. Still using social media as we did.

Just really really lost and so fed up.

2 Likes
2

Hey @ScentedAromas

It does sound like a few technical things may have been missed during the rebrand, which can definitely hurt traffic. Would you mind sharing your store URL and tell me more about your store in my private messages? I’d be happy to take a quick look and give you some pointers. I work with Shopify brands on issues just like this, so I might be able to help you spot what’s holding things back. Let’s get this turning around for you.

Best,

Moeed

4

Hi I do not want to revert back to old theme as it did not look good, it was a not a professional design

5

Hi Moeed, not sure how to direct message. But my website is www.scentedaromas.uk

6

Couple of easy items to check

  1. Did you implement 301 redirect from the old website to the new one?
  2. Was the search volume around branded terms…meaning you changed to a new unknown brand?
  3. Canonical Issues…double check your canonical are correct
  4. Crawled not indexed - googlebot might be hitting a snag
  5. check the head section of your code for meta noindex
  6. have you submitted the new sitemaps?

Hire a Technical SEO on Upwork to sort the issues.

7

If you haven’t already, take a quick look at the top 20 or so queries currently driving clicks to your site and compare those numbers with the top 20 queries that used to drive clicks to your site before the relaunch and make sure to target those old keywords that used to drive clicks to your site are still being targeted.

Just food for thought, if you changed the name of your store, the traffic your site used to gain from branded queries might have been lost during the update. You could attempt to regain that by announcing the name change on all your social media accounts.

Hope this helps some

8

@ScentedAromas Please note here at first that after changing or updating store contents, it is normal to have a traffic change or decreasing particularly, as search engines like Google needs to recrawl and reindex your page contents and it will exist a period of chaos.

The most crucial thing you need to do is to focus on the feedback you get from Google Search Console and do the best to eliminate all the unusual detection results and get them back to normal. After that, your store will gradually turn to a better performance on Google and the sales, as well as traffic, will increase again.

It will take some time, please stay steady and calm down, all things will be settled down eventually.