My Google rankings dropped suddenly. What should I do?
I run an e-commerce site selling handmade candles. For the last 6 months I was ranking on page 1 for "handmade soy candles" and getting about 300 organic visits a day. Last week I checked and I'm on page 4. I didn't do anything different. What happened?
1 Answer(s)
Sudden ranking drops almost always come from one of three places. First, check Google Search Console for any manual actions or spam notifications. Google sometimes issues algorithmic updates that hit specific niches hard. Check if there was a core update around the time your rankings dropped — you can verify this on sites like SEMrush or by checking SEO forums.
Second, check your competitors. Someone might have published a much better piece of content, built more backlinks, or improved their site speed. Use Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to spy on their recent activity. SEO is competitive, and if you stood still while others improved, you'd drop.
Third, check for technical issues. Did your site go down? Did you accidentally add a noindex tag? Check your robots.txt and make sure nothing changed. Also verify your page speed hasn't tanked — a slow site gets pushed down fast.
My advice: don't panic and don't make drastic changes. Audit your top pages, update outdated content, build 5-10 quality backlinks, and wait 4-6 weeks. Most drops recover if you address the root cause.