Your traffic used to be fine. Now it isn't.

A dramatic, sudden traffic decline understandably causes alarm, but it's rarely a mystery once actually investigated. It almost always traces back to one of a small number of specific causes, and checking them in the right order finds the answer faster than guessing broadly.

Technical issues should be ruled out first, because they're both common and completely invisible without checking directly — an accidental noindex tag, a broken canonical setting, or a botched recent change can silently remove pages from search entirely, with the page itself looking completely normal to a visitor.

It's also worth distinguishing a genuine problem from a normal seasonal pattern before assuming the worst. Comparing against the same period a year earlier, and checking whether comparable businesses show a similar pattern, often reveals that what felt alarming is actually a predictable, industry-wide seasonal dip.

The three areas below cover where a genuine, non-seasonal drop most commonly originates.