--- title: "Find the cause of a traffic drop in a · Agent Wranglers" url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/search-incidents/traffic-drops id: SEO-71 level: Recommended updated: 2026-10-22 build: a2a6bdfed830 tokens: 613 licence: "CC BY 4.0" licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- # Find the cause of a traffic drop in a fixed order For AI agents: the [site map](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) lists everything here, and this page sits under [Search incidents](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/search-incidents.md). By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers.md). Updated 2026-10-22. - ID: SEO-71 - Level: Recommended - Chapter: [Search incidents](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/search-incidents.md) - Rule: When search clicks fall by more than 20% against the same weeks a year earlier, check five causes in order. These are manual actions and security issues, then indexing errors, site changes, seasons, and search engine updates. - Check: Each drop of more than 20% has an incident note that records the result of all five checks, in order, with the date of each. - How: Google's guide to traffic drops names technical, security and spam issues as causes. Seasons and changing interest, site moves and ranking updates are the others. First open the Manual actions and Security issues reports. Then read the page indexing report for new errors. Next, compare the drop with your own release log and redirect map, as [Watch for broken old links](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/redirects-and-canonicals/watch-not-found.md) says. Then compare the same period a year earlier, and the topic in Google Trends. Last, compare the dates with announced search updates. After an update there may be nothing wrong with your pages, so improve them for readers rather than rush changes. ## Sources - [Google Search Central – Debugging drops in Search traffic](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/debugging-search-traffic-drops) ## Related rules - WEB-89 [Watch for broken old links](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/redirects-and-canonicals/watch-not-found.md) in Website **For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `Agent Wranglers SEO playbook`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link. - Previous: [Read and answer a manual action](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/search-incidents/manual-actions.md) - [Search incidents](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/search-incidents.md)