SEO finding
A page lost search clicks, or a query stopped bringing visitors
SEO Warning Severity: High
Part of the audit Search traffic checks. Finding id: seo.searchClicksDrop.
What it costs you
These are visitors you had four weeks ago and do not have now. Left alone, a drop caused by a change on the page does not recover.
What to do
Look at what changed on the page in the same weeks: title, content, status, noindex, canonical, redirects. Undo a change that hurt.
What it checks
- Clicks from search dropped
- New and lost search queries
How to fix it
Tie the drop to a change
- Open the change history of [url] and look for changes in the weeks of the drop.
- Check the other findings on the page: errors, noindex, a new canonical, a redirect.
- If nothing changed on the page, check its position for the main queries and who now ranks above it.
How to check: Compare clicks for the page over the next 28 days.
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 |
|---|---|---|
min_previous_clicks | 50 | Pages and queries with fewer clicks than this in the previous 28 days are not reported. |
drop_pct | 30 | A page is reported when its clicks fell by at least this many percent. |
How to verify by hand
Changes recorded on the same page since the previous crawl, and the same 28 days one year earlier.
What this relies on
A drop against the previous 28 days is a real loss, not season or a holiday.