Analyzing Google Search traffic drops on the Google Search Central Blog looks at some of the reasons why our website traffic may have dropped and how to use the Search Console Performance report and Google Trends to begin sorting it out.
The author lists five main causes for drops in search traffic:
- Technical issues
- Security issues
- Manual Actions
- Algorithmic changes
- Search interest disruption
The article goes on to suggest that we analyze the search traffic drop pattern in Search Console, and confirm that it’s not a drop that happens every year as a result of a holiday or a trend. It also recommends that we use Google Trends to help understand whether the drop is a wider trend or if it’s happening just for our site. In this way we can eliminate forces beyond those resulting from the site itself, and possibly save time going down the wrong path.