«Ukrainization» of a website: how a client crashed their traffic with one action

12.01.2022 | SEO, Useful tips

Mykola Syshchenko, SEO specialist
at the «Destra» internet marketing agency

In mid-July 2019, the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language” came into effect, causing quite a stir among marketers, content managers, and other professionals involved in digital marketing.

Previously, the number of language versions of a website mainly depended on the target audience and the business’s geographical reach. However, under the new law, starting from January 16, 2021, the Ukrainian version must be the primary version and load by default.

What the client did

First, the client did not consult our SEO specialist before making changes to the website. The admin panel of InSales, the platform used by the client’s online store, is specifically designed to be intuitive and easy to use. As a result, changing the language of the main page takes literally 15 seconds.

That is exactly what the client did — switched the language from Russian to Ukrainian, apparently believing that it was really that simple. Second, the client did not even inform us about the decision after switching the website to the Ukrainian version.

But that’s not all. The changes also affected Google Shopping ads. The InSales platform automatically generates a product feed based on the website, which Merchant Center uses to display ads in search results. As a result, new content began appearing under the old URLs. In other words, a user would search for something in Russian and see a product card in Russian, but after clicking it, they would land on the Ukrainian version of the page. Because of this mismatch, some targeted traffic and conversions were lost.

You’ve probably heard of the butterfly effect, where the flap of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the planet can eventually cause a tsunami on the other. Something similar happened to the website.

What it led to

Switching to another language version sent a signal to Google that the pages containing Russian-language content had become Ukrainian, while the URLs remained the same. As a result, some pages were no longer relevant for Russian-language search queries. Naturally, Google began reindexing the website’s pages, and organic traffic dropped significantly.

It is easy to see that the decline in both organic and paid traffic had a negative impact on sales. After the settings were optimized, traffic gradually began to recover, but it took some time to return to its previous levels.

The bottom line

The negative impact is best illustrated by Google Analytics data. The language was changed on January 15, and the original settings were restored on January 29. To clearly demonstrate the decline in traffic and sales, we compare the data from January 15 with the data from January 23 — one week after the language change.

Comparing January 15 and January 23, organic traffic dropped by half.

Organic traffic

The decline was even more significant for paid traffic: it dropped by 3.1 times.

Paid traffic

The number of orders decreased eightfold.

Sales

When it comes to sales, the situation was as follows. Sales from paid traffic dropped by 7.1 times, while sales from organic traffic decreased by 2.3 times.

To avoid affecting the existing pages and add to the website rather than changing its settings, a Ukrainian version could have been created using different URLs. Alternatively, there were several options for automatically loading the Ukrainian version based on:

the user’s IP address;
the user’s location;
the browser language.

It is important to understand that SEO is a whole system of website settings. They are often so closely interconnected that changing one of them can trigger a “chain reaction” and disrupt the others. An unoptimized website means less organic search traffic and less effective advertising.

To avoid situations like this, it is important to always consult with relevant specialists. And not only when making major changes, but even when making seemingly minor changes, such as uploading products to the website.