Analyzing a traffic drop When traffic drops, searchVIU shows you what has changed.

searchVIU overlays clicks, rankings and changes to your website. You can see faster where the cause lies.

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Four causesranking, CTR, demand, URL switch6 months of historyevery page with a screenshotLog file analysisGooglebot and AI bots
SEO Performanceexample-shop.com · week 41
Clicks below the expected trend/tents/ · cause: ranking · canonical change in week 40
High
Fewer impressions at the same position/guides/ · cause: demand
Medium
Minor fluctuations23 pages within the expected trend, held back
Info
Finding the cause

Clicks are falling and nobody knows why

IT reports no changes, and the ranking tool shows nothing unusual. Meanwhile, management wants to know what is going on. The search usually comes down to three questions.

Is it the website?A template, a canonical or a redirect has changed.
Is it Google?Rankings or search results have shifted, for example due to a core update.
Is it demand?People are simply searching less for your topics.
SEO Performance Monitoring

searchVIU assigns every deviation to one of four typical causes

searchVIU calculates an expected click trend for each property. If a page falls outside it, fixed rules assign the finding to a cause. The report arrives by email every week.

1Ranking

The page ranks lower for its search queries.

2CTR and SERP

Same position with fewer clicks, for example because of new elements in the search results.

3Demand

People search less for the terms.

4URL switch

Google shows a different URL from your website for the search queries.

More about SEO Performance Monitoring
Changes to the website

Every URL has a history, and searchVIU has stored it

searchVIU stores every crawl. For every URL, you can see screenshots, HTML changes and the clicks from Search Console over time. This lets you trace what changed before the drop.

By default, the history goes back six months.

    More about the SEO crawler
    1. Week 38Full crawl without findings

      /tents/ with a self-referencing canonical

    2. Week 40 · TuesdayPage Watch reports a canonical change

      /tents/ points to /camping/ after a release

    3. Week 41Clicks below the expected trend

      Cause: ranking, /tents/ loses positions

    Demo project

    Log file analysis

    The logs know whether Googlebot is still coming

    In the server logs, you can see how often Googlebot and AI bots fetch your pages and which responses they get. If crawling drops, you can see there when it happened and in which sections.

    Logs come from Cloudflare, via upload, FTP or Amazon S3.

    • Crawl budgetwhich sections the bots fetch
    • Fake botsdetected and filtered out
    More about log file analysis
    Googlebot requests per weekexample-shop.com · weeks 34 to 41
    60k30k0Drop in week 40
    Log file analysisDemo project
    Connect early

    Only if you collect data today will you have yesterday's data tomorrow

    Search Console brings its own history. Crawls and logs only start from the day you connect them. If you connect them before something happens, you will have a comparison at the next drop.

    All integrations
    Interpretation

    We help you interpret the data

    Data consulting is included in every tier, 30 minutes per month. From 250,000 URLs, it is one hour with a senior consultant.

      Michael Weber
      Michael WeberFounder of searchVIU, around 20 years of SEO experience.

      Frequently asked questions about traffic drops

      Was it a core update or our own error?
      searchVIU shows both side by side. If nothing has changed technically on the affected pages and many pages lose positions at the same time, that points to an update. This way you rule out your own technical errors first, even if an update cannot always be proven with certainty.
      The drop has already happened. Can searchVIU still help?
      Partly. Search Console brings its own history, so clicks and positions can also be analyzed retrospectively. searchVIU only collects crawl history and logs from the start.
      How far back does the history go?
      Six months by default, with a screenshot of every page, week by week. The retention period can be adjusted.
      Which data does searchVIU need?
      Search Console is a requirement. Logs from Cloudflare, via upload, FTP or Amazon S3 also show whether and how Google is still crawling.
      We already use SISTRIX.
      The two work well together. SISTRIX shows visibility, searchVIU shows the changes to the website. SISTRIX and searchVIU
      Which other situations does searchVIU cover?
      For example releases, relaunches and shop migrations. All use cases
      Demo

      Let's talk about your website.

      In the demo, Michael shows you how searchVIU works, using your website and a demo project.

      1. Request in three short steps
      2. Quick alignment on crawler access, NDA and Search Console
      3. Demo with your website and the demo project
      4. Start planned and supported together
      1. Website
      2. Needs
      3. Contact

      Which website is it about?