Fixed-fee diagnosis

Traffic drop and penalty recovery

Find out why your Google traffic fell, before anyone changes the site in a panic.

Most drops have an ordinary cause: a release, a lost redirect, a tracking change or a Google update. A few are penalties. Each needs a different fix.

This is for you if

  • Organic traffic fell sharply and hasn't come back.
  • Search Console shows a manual action or a security issue.
  • The drop lined up with a Google update, a redesign, or a new theme or plugin.
  • Enquiries fell, and nobody is sure whether traffic did.
  • Someone has already "fixed" it, and nothing improved.

What you get

  1. A diagnosis report

    When the drop started, which pages and searches lost traffic, the likely cause, and the evidence for it.

  2. The dull causes ruled out first

    Tracking, indexing, redirects, robots and noindex, server errors and speed.

  3. An update and penalty check

    Core and spam updates, manual actions, the link profile, thin or duplicated content.

  4. A recovery plan

    Ordered by effect, including what to stop doing straight away.

  5. Manual action clean-up

    When there is one: the clean-up, a disavow file if links are the cause, and the reconsideration request.

  6. A walkthrough call

    And the option for me to do the fixes.

What the cause usually turns out to be

From years of these investigations, starting with the team of 70 I led.

  • A redesign that changed URLs without redirects.
  • A staging "noindex" left on after launch.
  • Tracking that broke, so the drop was only in the report.
  • A core update that rewarded pages written from first-hand experience over generic ones.
  • Links bought years ago, now caught by a spam update.

How it works

  1. Pin down the drop

    Search Console, Analytics and server data, lined up against your releases and Google's update dates.

  2. Rule things out

    Tracking, indexing and technical faults first, because they are the quickest to fix.

  3. Find the cause

    Compare the pages and searches that fell with those that held.

  4. Plan and fix

    You get the plan. I do the work, guide your developer, or hand it over.

What I won't do

  • Guarantee recovery. Google decides, and some update losses only reverse with a later update.
  • Disavow links on guesswork. Removing the wrong links can cost rankings.
  • Rewrite the whole site before the cause is known.

Questions

Is it a penalty?

Usually not. A penalty shows in Search Console under Manual actions. Most drops come from updates, technical changes or broken tracking.

Can we recover fully?

Often, when the cause is technical. After a core update, recovery depends on real improvements and on Google's later updates, so I won't promise a date.

What do you need from us?

Access to Search Console, Analytics and the CMS. Also a list of what changed around the drop: releases, plugins, content and hosting.

We migrated and lost traffic. Can you still help?

Yes. Missing or wrong redirects are the most common cause, and many can still be fixed.

Do you handle hacked sites?

I find and fix the search damage: spam pages, injected links and security warnings in Search Console. For cleaning the server itself, I bring in a security specialist.

Send me the date it started.

A date, a Search Console screenshot and a list of recent changes are often enough for a first view on the call.

Book a free 30-minute call

Free, and without obligation.