SEO finding
A page gets clearly fewer search clicks than in the weeks before
SEO Warning Severity: High
Part of the audit Search traffic checks. Finding id: seo.clicksFallingOverWeeks.
What it costs you
Fewer visitors from search for this page, and the trend continues until the cause is found.
What to do
Compare the page as it is now with how it was before the drop, and look at which queries lost clicks.
What it checks
- Clicks falling over recent weeks
How to fix it
Find what changed
- Open the change history of [group key] from [period started] on: title, headings, main text, canonical and indexing directives.
- In Search Console, compare the queries of the two periods for this page.
- If the page did not change, check whether it still ranks for the same queries or whether the results page itself changed.
How to check: Clicks for the page recover in the following weeks.
A real case
The independent review site HouseFresh went from about 4,000 visitors a day from Google Search in October 2023 to about 200, a 91% loss. The sharp fall started on 9 March 2024, after Google's core update.
Thresholds
| Name | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
window_days | 28 | Length of each of the two periods compared, in days, counted back from the latest day in the data. |
min_clicks_before | 50 | Ignore pages with fewer clicks than this in the earlier period; small numbers swing by chance. |
drop_share | 0.3 | Report when clicks fell by more than this share. A starting value, not taken from a source. |
How to verify by hand
The page's own change history for the same period.
What this relies on
A drop that starts when the page changed was caused by the change.