# Diagnose a sudden drop in organic traffic

Works through a structured diagnosis of a drop in Google traffic: tracking, technical issues, algorithm updates and content.

- Topic: SEO & Website
- Framework: RTF
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Rewrite & Edit, Analyze, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/diagnose-a-sudden-drop-in-organic-traffic

## Prompt

```text
Act as a technical SEO consultant diagnosing a traffic drop.

**When the drop started and how big:** [DATES, %]
**Which pages or sections fell:** [DETAILS FROM ANALYTICS / SEARCH CONSOLE]
**Recent changes to the site:** [redesign, migration, new CMS, content changes, robots.txt edits]
**Search Console notes:** [coverage errors, manual actions, indexing changes]

Task:
1. Rule out tracking problems first (analytics tag, consent changes, filters).
2. Check technical causes: noindex, robots.txt, canonicals, redirects, server errors, site speed.
3. Compare dates with known search algorithm updates; I will confirm the dates.
4. Check whether rankings, click-through rate or demand changed (seasonality).
5. Give a ranked list of likely causes, the evidence that would confirm each, and the fix.

Rules: don't claim a cause without evidence; list the exact reports to check.
```

## What to fill in

- DATES, %
- DETAILS FROM ANALYTICS / SEARCH CONSOLE
- coverage errors, manual actions, indexing changes

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.