How to Diagnose a Traffic Drop in 30 Minutes
- → Check for manual actions first (Search Console)
- → Look for technical disasters: noindex, robots.txt, server errors
- → Find the exact date it started and match to algorithm updates
- → Isolate what dropped: specific pages, queries, countries, or devices
- → Don't make changes until you understand the cause
Traffic drops are terrifying. Your first instinct is to panic and start changing things. Don't panic.
Most traffic drops have simple explanations. This process finds them.
Minute 0-5: Check for Manual Actions
Before anything else: Search Console > Security & Manual Actions > Manual actions.
If there's a manual action, you have your answer. Everything else is secondary. Fix the violation first.
No manual action? Move on.
Minute 5-10: Check for Technical Disasters
Search Console > Indexing > Pages.
Look for sudden spikes in "Not indexed" pages. Common culprits:
- Noindex tags accidentally added (check your recent deployments)
- Robots.txt blocking important pages (check robots.txt for recent changes)
- Server errors (check the "Crawled - currently not indexed" and server error categories)
Also: Site down? SSL expired? Did someone push a bad deploy? Check the obvious.
Minute 10-15: Identify When It Started
Search Console > Performance. Set the date range to 16 months (maximum). Look at the graph.
Find the exact date traffic started dropping. Write it down.
Now check: is this a single drop or a gradual decline? Single drops usually have a specific cause. Gradual declines are usually competitive or content quality issues.
Minute 15-20: Check for Algorithm Updates
Search "Google algorithm update [month year]" for when your drop started.
Was there a confirmed update? Core update? Helpful content update? Spam update?
If your drop aligns with an update, you have a direction for investigation. Not a solution yet, but a direction.
Minute 20-25: Isolate What Dropped
Back to Search Console Performance. Compare the drop period to the same period before the drop.
Check Pages tab: Did all pages drop, or just some? If specific pages, which ones?
Check Queries tab: Did all queries drop, or just some? If specific queries, what do they have in common?
Check Countries tab: Did all countries drop, or just some? (Especially important for international sites)
Check Devices tab: Desktop vs mobile - different drops might indicate different issues.
The more specific you can get, the closer you are to the cause.
Minute 25-30: Form a Hypothesis
By now you should have one of these patterns:
Everything dropped at once: Technical issue, algorithm penalty, or major site-wide change.
Specific pages dropped: Those pages have a problem. Check for thin content, outdated information, or new competitors. If multiple pages are competing for the same keywords, you might have keyword cannibalization.
Specific query types dropped: Google may have changed how they interpret those queries. Check what's ranking now vs. what ranked before. Sometimes the issue is too many low-quality pages diluting your site's authority.
Gradual decline across everything: Usually competitive pressure or accumulated content quality issues. Harder to fix quickly.
Common Causes Summary
- Manual action: Fix the violation, submit reconsideration request
- Technical issue: Fix the technical problem, wait for recrawl
- Algorithm update: Assess content quality honestly, improve holistically
- Lost rankings to competitors: Analyze what they're doing better, improve your content
- Seasonal: Compare to same period last year before panicking
- Tracking issue: Check your analytics implementation (embarrassingly common)
30 minutes gets you a diagnosis. Fixing it takes longer. But you can't fix what you don't understand.