Your traffic dropped. Was it your redesign, Google, or AI?
We name the cause in three business days, with evidence. If it’s fixable, we fix it and guarantee the fix. If it isn’t, we tell you before you spend another dollar.
DEATH TO SEO is an independent traffic-forensics service: it tells you whether your redesign, Google, or AI killed your search traffic, in three business days, with evidence.
Three suspects, checked in this order
Your redesign
Anything your site did: a redesign, a new platform, a domain move, a new host or CDN, broken redirects, a leftover noindex tag, pages that only render in JavaScript.
Old pages that used to rank now return errors.
This one is fixable, so when we fix it, we guarantee the fix.
Google
Core updates, spam updates, Discover updates, and problems on Google’s side.
The drop starts inside an update’s rollout window and nothing on your site changed.
Sometimes recoverable. Never guaranteed, by us or by anyone.
AI
AI Overviews, AI Mode and chat assistants answering the question.
Your rankings hold and your clicks fall.
That loss is structural. We’ll say so plainly, and we don’t sell a fix for it.
What a Cause Check looks like
Estimated visits from US search fell 57% year over year in April 2026, from 474 to 204.
Your redesign went live around early February. Of 30 pages archived before it, 16 now return a 404 error.
Google’s March 2026 core update rolled out March 27 – April 8.
Two suspects. The broken pages are fixable on your side. Search Console will show how much of the loss sits on them.
A real Cause Check also estimates what the drop costs you a month. We left that out here: it needs cost-per-click data we didn’t pull for a public case.
A matching date is not a verdict
Ten site owners asked for help in Google’s public help forum after a traffic drop or a redesign. We checked all ten from the outside on October 22, 2026. Six sites were too small, or outside the US, for outside data to see. All four of the rest dropped inside or near a Google update.
In two of those four, matching the drop to the update date alone would have blamed Google for something the site did. One had moved to a new domain. One had a redesign that left 16 of 30 sampled old URLs returning a 404 error.
That’s why we check your site before we blame Google.
- 10
- 6
- 4
- 2 of 4
- RedesignEarly February 2026, owner’s account
- March 2026 core updateMarch 27 – April 8, 2026
| Month | Estimated visits per month from US search |
|---|---|
| January 2025 | 436 |
| February 2025 | 443 |
| March 2025 | 418 |
| April 2025 | 474 |
| May 2025 | 351 |
| June 2025 | 335 |
| July 2025 | 333 |
| August 2025 | 458 |
| September 2025 | 486 |
| October 2025 | 386 |
| November 2025 | 229 |
| December 2025 | 223 |
| January 2026 | 348 |
| February 2026 | 448 |
| March 2026 | 441 |
| April 2026 | 204 |
| May 2026 | 200 |
| June 2026 | 209 |
| July 2026 | 193 |
| August 2026 | 348 |
| September 2026 | 356 |
| October 2026 | 332 |
How it works
Step 1. Cause Check. Free.
Tell us your domain and what changed. Within one business day you get an email that names the leading suspects with dates, example URLs and counts, and estimates what the drop costs you a month.
Step 2. Autopsy. $1,500 for the first 10, then $2,000.
Add us as a read-only user in Google Search Console. Within three business days you have the cause-of-death verdict, the loss priced by page and query, the odds for each cause, and a fix list your developers can start on. If we’re late or can’t name the cause with evidence, you get a full refund.
Step 3. Treatment, by cause.
Your redesign leads to Rescue. We map every old URL to the right new page. You pay the second half when our crawl confirms the fix.
Google leads to the Recovery Program, only when the odds are fair. Month one is a pilot you can stop at day 30.
AI leads to no product. The Autopsy tells you which losses are structural and where your budget does more.
Every price, in public
| Product | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Cause Check | Free | Leading suspects and estimated monthly loss, by email within one business day |
| Autopsy | $1,500 for the first 10, then $2,000 | Cause-of-death verdict with evidence in three business days |
| Rescue | From $2,500 | Every old URL mapped and fixed, verified by our crawl in about two weeks |
| Recovery Program | $2,500 a month for 3 months | For Google-caused losses with fair odds. Paid pilot in month one |
| Launch Cover | From $5,000 | For teams about to redesign or migrate. Rescue is free if a checklist item causes a drop, as long as our map was implemented as delivered |
| Watch | $199 a month | Weekly checks and alerts after an Autopsy, Rescue or Launch Cover. Cancel anytime |
What we guarantee, and what we won’t
We guarantee
The cause named with evidence within three business days, or a full refund.
You pay half to start and half when our crawl confirms every old URL resolves to the right page and the site is fully indexable.
If traffic drops after launch because of anything on our checklist, Rescue is free, as long as our map was implemented as delivered.
We won’t guarantee
Rankings, traffic recovery, AI citations, or any timeline that depends on Google. Google’s own documentation says “there’s no guarantee that changes you make to your website will result in noticeable impact in search results” (Google Search Central, updated December 2025). We agree, and we price accordingly.
And one policy: if the Autopsy says the loss is mostly structural or unrecoverable, we say so, and we don’t sell you the Recovery Program.
Who this is for
Your organic search traffic fell 20% or more in the last six months. You can’t tell why. Everyone involved has a theory, and you’re the one who has to explain it upstairs.
It fits best for B2B SaaS, ecommerce, professional services, and publishers who sell something.
It’s not for
Sites too small to show up in third-party ranking data before the drop (roughly under 1,000 US visits a month). You still get the free Cause Check, and we’ll tell you honestly what it can and can’t see.
Sites built on scaled or spam tactics looking for a workaround.
Anyone who wants a ranking guarantee.
Who’s behind it
DEATH TO SEO is run by Peter, who spent about 15 years in B2B demand generation, most of it as the buyer of agency services. We don’t build websites and don’t sell retainers by default, so we have no stake in which suspect did it.
Questions
How is this different from a traffic drop audit?
You see evidence before you pay: the free Cause Check names the suspects with dates, URLs and counts. The Autopsy takes three business days and is refunded in full if it’s late or inconclusive. Every price is on this site. And AI is a named suspect, so we tell you when the traffic isn’t coming back.
What if it was more than one suspect?
That’s common. Google confirmed eight ranking updates between December 2025 and October 2026, about one a month, so almost any redesign lands near one. The Autopsy splits the loss by page and query wherever the evidence allows, and says plainly where it doesn’t.
What access do you need?
For the Cause Check, only your domain. For the Autopsy, a read-only user in Google Search Console. You can remove it the day the verdict arrives.
Can you tell us whether our traffic will come back?
We grade each cause: Recoverable, Partly recoverable, Waits on Google, or Structural. We can’t promise what Google will do, and we don’t.
We’re about to redesign. Can you help before it goes wrong?
That’s Launch Cover. We map every old URL, check the build before launch, crawl it on launch day, and watch it for 60 days.