Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically? (Here’s What to Check)

It can be alarming if your website’s Google rankings drop suddenly.

But before you make any changes, it’s important to check certain things first.

Google’s algorithm updates are among the most common ways your website’s rankings can be negatively impacted.

Google doesn’t like low-quality or misleading results appearing at the top of its organic search results, so it runs regular algorithm updates to preserve the quality of its search index.

Updates are announced on Google’s status page. So it’s worth checking if any dates align with your website’s ranking drops.

It takes time to align these dates against your organic traffic data, so a faster way to understand the impact is to use a tool like Ahrefs.

To do this, head to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, plug in your domain, and scan the Ⓖ updates at the bottom of the Overview 2.0 organic traffic chart.

Hovering over the Ⓖ symbols will give you more detailed information about the updates.

Once you’ve established there’s been a Google update, you’ll need to check its date against your total organic traffic to see if there’s been a drop at the sametime.

To check your organic traffic in Site Explorer, youcan:

1. Plug in your domain and scroll down to the Overview 2.0 chart.
2. Uncheck everything apart from “Avg. organic traffic.”
3. Set the timeline to “All” and “Weekly.” This helps you to see the complete timeline for the organic...