Google Search Console sending alerts for big ranking, traffic drops

Google is now sending alerts and notifications from Google Search Console when it detects a “substantial drop” in clicks to your website from the Google search results compared to previous weeks data. Google is basically looking at week-over-week data in the Performance report and if the data is substantially off, Google can send a notification to verified property owners in Search Console of the change.

The notification. Vance Moore III shared a screenshot of the notification on Twitter, it reads “Search Console analyzed your performance report and found that your site had a substantial drop in clicks last week compared to the previous weeks. This drop is likely due to a drop in clicks for the query “X”.”

How it works. It appears Google will compare your site clicks and query clicks as reported in the Google Search Console’s performance report. If it sees huge fluctuations, Google may send the notification to those that have verified access to that property in Search Console. In the case above, Google saw a 48% drop in weekly clicks from Google search to the web site and thus the email alert went out.

Why would you see drops in clicks. The most obvious reason you would see a drop in clicks or impressions from Google search is that your web page that ranked in a certain position in Google no longer ranks in that position. Or maybe there was a spike in specific news-related searches that stopped trending the week after? The news related trend, there is not much you can do about. But if your rankings dropped, maybe there is a technical issue with the page that caused it to drop. That is where you do some SEO audit work to try to remedy the issue.

Why it matters. Some site owners do not look at their analytics or Search Console performance reports often enough. These alerts can help site owners realize changes in their site’s performance in Google search sooner, rather than later. It can help them find issues and address them before the issue significantly impacts their business.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.