Why is your website traffic dropping? Find out which suspect did it, free, in one business day.
Search traffic drops for one of three reasons: your redesign (or migration) broke something, a Google update re-ranked your pages, or AI answers now take the click while your rankings hold. The free Cause Check tests your redesign and Google against your drop date from the outside, tells you what to look for on AI, and emails you the leading suspect, with evidence, within one business day.
Get your free Cause Check
What counts as a traffic drop?
A traffic drop is a sustained fall in clicks from Google search to your site. We measure it in Google Search Console against the site’s trailing three-month high, and we treat 30% or more below that high for two months in a row as a real drop. A sustained fall of 20% or more is still worth a check, even before it crosses that line. We compare each month with the same month a year earlier, so a seasonal dip doesn’t count. Without Search Console access, we use estimated monthly visits from US search instead.
What can cause a website traffic drop?
| Suspect | The tell | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| Your redesign | The drop starts after a relaunch, migration or domain move, and old pages that used to rank now return errors or redirect to the homepage. | Open five old URLs from before the change (your old sitemap or the Wayback Machine has them). Note where each one lands. |
| The drop starts inside a Google update’s rollout window, and nothing on your site changed. | Compare your drop date with Google’s update calendar. | |
| AI | Average position and impressions hold in Search Console, but clicks fall on queries that now show an AI Overview. | Search your top lost queries and look for an AI answer above your result. |
Is it a real drop?
Tracking breaks.A redesign often drops or duplicates the analytics tag. If your analytics shows a drop and Search Console clicks don’t, the traffic is still there and the counting broke.
Seasonality.Many businesses have a slow season. Compare each month with the same month last year, not with the month before.
Falling demand.If impressions in Search Console fell while your average position held, fewer people searched. That’s a demand change, not a ranking loss.
What the Cause Check email contains
The time of death. The month your estimated search traffic fell, and by how much.
Google’s updates in that window. Every confirmed update that rolled out around the drop, with dates.
Your old URLs, checked. A sample of pages from before the drop, taken from the Wayback Machine’s archive and requested live: how many now return a 404 error or redirect to your homepage, with examples.
The indexing basics. Domain redirects, noindex tags and robots.txt rules that tell Google to stay away.
The leading suspect. Which suspect the evidence points to, and whether more than one fits.
Your estimated monthly loss. What the lost traffic is likely worth each month, in dollars.
A straight answer on next steps, including when an Autopsy isn’t worth it for you.
Who gets a Cause Check?
Anyone who sends the form. If your site drew fewer than roughly 1,000 US visits a month before the drop, third-party ranking data can’t see it. You still get the old-URL and indexing checks, and we tell you what we couldn’t see. For sites that small, the Cause Check is all we offer.
AI can’t be confirmed from outside. That needs your Search Console data, which is what the Autopsy uses.
What happens after the Cause Check?
You send the form and see a confirmation right away.
Within one business day, the Cause Check arrives from hello@deathtoseo.com.
If you want the full verdict, reply to start an Autopsy. If the check already shows broken old URLs, you can book Rescue directly. If not, keep the check. It’s yours.
What happens after the free check
We use what you send only to write your Cause Check. Privacy policy
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. No card, no call.
How is this different from an online SEO checker?
A checker scores your site as it is today. The Cause Check compares your site before and after the drop and lines that up with Google’s update dates, so it answers what changed, and when.
My site is new or small. Is it worth sending?
Send it. If outside data can’t see your traffic, we’ll say so and send what the old-URL and indexing checks found.
Do I have to buy anything after?
No.