My website traffic suddenly dropped 50% in one week. What should I do?
I run a recipe blog and my Google traffic was steady at around 5,000 visits per day. Last Monday it just crashed to 2,500 and hasn't come back. I didn't change anything on the site. I checked Google Search Console and there are no manual actions. My rankings for my top keywords are still there. What could cause this and how do I recover?
1 Answer(s)
This is terrifying but it happens more often than people think. Since your rankings are still there and there's no manual action, here's what likely happened:
1. Google algorithm update. Google rolls out updates almost constantly. Check Search Engine Roundtable or Search Engine Journal for recent update announcements. Your site may have been affected even without a manual action.
2. Check for indexing issues. Go to Search Console > Pages and see if the number of indexed pages dropped. Sometimes Google de-indexes pages after a crawl error.
3. Check your Core Web Vitals. A recent update might be penalizing slow pages. Run a PageSpeed Insights test on your top pages.
4. Look at your traffic sources. In Google Analytics, check if the drop is from organic only or all sources. If it's only organic, it's definitely an algorithm issue. If direct traffic also dropped, something else is going on.
The recovery usually takes 2-8 weeks. In the meantime, publish fresh content and build some backlinks to signal to Google that your site is still active and relevant.