Your website traffic dropped: a diagnosis checklist before you call an agency

A sudden fall in search traffic is stressful, and it is easy to blame the wrong cause. A calm, ordered check usually finds the answer, or at least gives an agency a head start.

Step 1: confirm the drop is real

Compare the same period year on year in your analytics, not just last week against this week. Check that tracking still works: a removed script or changed tag can look like a traffic collapse. Compare with Search Console clicks, which are independent of your analytics setup.

Step 2: find the date and the pages

Locate the day the drop began. Then see whether it hit the whole site, one section or a few pages. Site-wide drops point to technical, penalty or tracking causes. Page-level drops point to content, competition or ranking changes.

Step 3: match it to events

If the drop matches	Likely cause	First check
Website redesign or migration	Broken redirects, blocked pages	Redirect map, robots.txt
New plugin or theme	Speed or indexing issue	Page speed, index status
Known Google update	Quality or relevance reassessment	Content against competitors
Seasonal pattern	Normal demand shift	Last year’s figures
Warning in Search Console	Manual action	Manual actions report
New competitor content	Lost rankings	Search results for key terms

Step 4: check the basics yourself

• Is the site online and loading for everyone?
• Did robots.txt or a noindex setting change?
• Are key pages still indexed?
• Are sitemaps submitted and error-free?
• Did titles, headings or URLs change?

The glossary explains robots.txt, sitemaps and manual actions if any terms are unfamiliar.

Step 5: look at your own recent changes

Agency work is a possible cause. Link building of poor quality, mass page changes or content deletion can all hurt. Ask for a written account of changes made in the weeks around the drop. Reviewers in the corpus do mention missed deliverables and changing contacts, so keep your own change log.

When to get help

Call in specialists if the drop is large, if the cause is not in your checks, or if there is a manual action. The directory lists a recovery service for penalties and traffic losses, and technical agencies handle diagnosis. Browse the technical SEO category to see who offers audits. The SEO audit guide explains what a useful report contains.

What not to do in a panic

A few reactions make a drop worse. Do not rewrite every page at once; you lose the ability to tell what helped. Do not buy a pile of links hoping to bounce back, since that can create a new problem on top of the first. Do not delete content that has lost traffic without checking whether it still matters to customers.

Instead, change one thing at a time where you can, and note the date of each change. Keep a simple log with the date, the change and who made it. If you later hire a specialist, that log saves days of guesswork.

Also resist the urge to compare yourself with a single competitor. Look at your own history first, then at the pattern across several rivals. If everyone dropped, the cause is likely outside your site. If only you did, look inward.

Give recoveries time. Even after a real fix, search engines need to recrawl and reassess your pages, which can take weeks.

What to ask them

1. How will you find the cause before proposing fixes?
2. What evidence will you show me?
3. What is the realistic timeline for recovery?
4. What will you not promise?

Be sceptical of anyone who guarantees recovery in days. Recovery depends on the cause and sometimes on the next Google update. Our scoring method page explains how we score providers, and the home page lets you compare options.