SEO finding
A page is shown in search results much less often than four weeks ago
SEO Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit Search traffic checks. Finding id: seo.searchImpressionsDrop.
What it costs you
Impressions fall before clicks do. A page that is shown less will be clicked less in the weeks that follow.
What to do
Look at what changed on the page and in its ranking in the same weeks.
What it checks
- Search appearances dropped
How to fix it
Find what pushed the page down
- Check the open findings for [url]: status, noindex, canonical, redirects and recent content changes.
- In Search Console, compare the queries of the page for the two periods and note which ones it lost.
- If nothing changed on your side, look at the pages now shown for those queries.
How to check: Compare impressions for the page over the next 28 days.
Check whether demand fell
- In Search Console, compare the last 28 days with the same days one year earlier.
- If the same dip shows there, it is season. Close the finding.
- If not, compare the queries of the page for the two periods and note which ones it lost.
How to check: A person has compared the periods.
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_impressions | 500 | Pages with fewer impressions than this in the previous 28 days are not reported. |
drop_pct | 40 | A page is reported when its impressions fell by at least this many percent. |
position_slack | 1.0 | The average position may get this much worse before the drop is put down to ranking and not to demand. |
How to verify by hand
The same 28 days one year earlier in Search Console, and the queries the page lost.
What this relies on
A drop against the previous 28 days is a real loss, not season or a holiday.