How to Analyze Traffic Drops on Google Search Console: Tutorial

 

As a website owner, it can be concerning to see a decline in traffic on your website. In this tutorial, we will take you through the necessary steps to investigate traffic drops by analyzing the Search Console Performance report and using Google Trends.

Main Reasons for Organic Traffic Drops

Before we dive into the tutorial, it is essential to understand the main reasons for a decline in organic traffic. These include:

1. Technical issues - Errors that prevent Google from crawling, indexing, or serving your pages to users.

2. Manual actions - If your website does not follow Google's guidelines, some pages or the entire site may be less visible in Google Search results.

3. Algorithm updates - Core updates may change how some pages perform in Google Search over time, leading to a slow decline in traffic.

4. Search interest disruption - Changes in user behavior or external influences could affect the demand for certain queries.

5. Seasonality effects - Regular traffic fluctuations due to weather, vacations, or holidays.

6. Reporting glitches - Sudden major changes followed by a quick return to the norm could indicate a simple glitch.

Analyzing Traffic Drops Using Search Console Performance Report

The Search Console Performance report is an effective tool for understanding traffic fluctuations. To access the Performance report in Google Search Console, follow these simple steps:

1. Log in to the Google Search Console website at search.google.com/search-console.

2. Click on the website you want to analyze.

3. In the left-hand sidebar menu, click on “Performance.”

You will now see the Performance report for your selected property, displaying data such as total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average position for your website.

Ways to Analyze the Data

Here are some ways to analyze the data on the Performance report:

1. Expand the date range to 16 months to view the drop in context and identify any patterns or trends.

2. Periodically export and store data to access more than 16 months of information.

3. Compare the drop period to a similar period (e.g., the same month last year or the same day last week) to pinpoint the exact changes.

4. Explore all available tabs to determine if changes occurred only for specific queries, pages, countries, devices, or Search appearances.

5. Ensure you compare the same number of days and preferably the same days of the week.

6. Analyze different Search types separately to understand if the drop was limited to Search, Google Images, Video, or News tab.

Using Google Trends for Industry Analysis

Google Trends provides insights into web, image, news, shopping, and YouTube search trends. Here are some ways to use it for industry analysis:

1. Analyze general trends within your industry or country to identify changes in user behavior or competing products.

2. Segment data by country and category for more relevant insights into your website audience.

3. Examine queries driving traffic to your site for seasonal fluctuations or trends.

In Summary

Understanding the reasons behind Google Search traffic drops is crucial. Using the Search Console Performance report and Google Trends, you can identify and analyze the causes of these drops, helping you stay ahead of industry trends and maintain your online presence. In his next video, Google's Search Advocate, Daniel Waisberg, will explore more ways to analyze search performance, including using a bubble chart.