Organic traffic drops, the most likely causes according to Google

It is a situation we could unfortunately all find ourselves in: a (bad) morning we open Search Console and find that traffic from Google Search has decreased. And no matter how hard we try, reason, intervene and harangue, our site continues to gradually lose organic traffic. What is the reason for this sudden and slow descent? In our support comes Google, which presents a series of tips for analyzing the reasons why we may be losing organic traffic, with 5 causes that are considered the most frequent, and a guide (including graphics) that visually shows the effects of such declines and helps us analyze the negative fluctuations in organic traffic to try to respond and lift our site.

Sites in decline, causes and tips from Google

The issue was addressed in a lengthy article by Daniel Waisberg on Google’s constantly updated blog (the latest is dated Sept. 26, 2023) that analytically explains what negative traffic fluctuations look like and what they mean for a site’s volume.

In a nutshell, according to the Search Advocate, a drop in organic search traffic “can occur for several reasons and most of them can be reversed,” writes Search Advocate Daniel Waisberg in the blog post, noting that “it may not be easy to understand what exactly happened to your site”.

Just to help us understand what is affecting the traffic on our site, the Googler has sketched some examples of falls and the way they can potentially affect our traffic.

The shape of graphs for a site that loses traffic

For the first time, then, Google shows the real look of the various types of organic traffic drops through the screenshots of the Google Search Console performance reports, adding a number of tips to help us deal with such situations. It is interesting to notice the visual difference that exists between the various graphs,