Lost organic traffic? Here’s how you find out what’s going wrong

You’re juggling store openings, events, offline promotions, email campaigns, and managing external agencies for paid search, social media, and SEO.

With so much on your plate, it makes sense to rely on your external agencies—they’re the experts, after all.

But then you notice your organic traffic is declining, and you realise questions will be coming from the C-suite.

So, what do you do?

Before I dive into how to diagnose an organic traffic drop, it’s worth knowing you’re not alone. So many brands have seen declines in 2025, particularly since the March core update.

Why so many brands saw traffic drop from March

Brands have seen an unusual pattern in Google Search Console: impressions are increasing, but clicks are dropping—sometimes dramatically. This disconnect is being called “The Great Decoupling.”

Here’s what happened:

• Ahrefs reported a 116% increase in AI Overviews appearing in search results.
• For sites cited in these Overviews, this creates a second opportunity for impressions – one in traditional results and one in the AI Overview.
• Click-through rates are dropping when AI Overviews are present — Ahrefs found that their presence correlates with a 34.5% lower average CTR for the top-ranking page, as users increasingly get answers without leaving the SERP.

So if your Google Search Console chart looks like an open crocodile mouth (clicks diving, impressions soaring), you’re not alone. This is now a structural change in how users interact with Google.

To reinforce this point, here’s what the same chart looks like for a site that does not appear in AI Overviews.

As Patrick Stox (Ahrefs) shared on LinkedIn, the absence of AI Overview citations results in no “crocodile mouth”—clicks and impressions remain tightly correlated. This strengthens the argument that AI Overviews are the driving force behind the great decoupling.

Does that mean you don’t want to be cited or summarised in AI Overviews? Of course not.

Being cited means your brand is trusted, visible and still influencing the answer, even if clicks are down. But it does mean we need to adapt how we measure success and how we structure content for this new reality.

Didn’t drop in March? Let’s find out why you’re down

Just because your organic traffic is declining doesn’t mean you have a site-wide issue. The drop could be due to one blog post or page that previously contributed significantly to your traffic, an entire subfolder, or even your whole site. The key is to find out exactly where the issue lies.

Google Search Console is the tool you can use to identify the source of the problem.

1. Pinpoint when the traffic started to decline

You likely have a rough idea of when the traffic started to decline. Use Google Search Console to look at a period roughly twice that length and focus specifically on clicks and impressions.

If you start to see a downward trend in the graph, you’ve found your approximate date of decline.

This graphic below shows you how the drops you’re seeing might be attributed (based on a similar graphic from Google).

2. Perform a comparison

Compare the period from when the traffic started to decline to now, against the same period in the past. Match days of the week for more accurate comparisons, and be mindful of seasonal trends, I know from my own client experience that school holidays can be influential. 

Focus on clicks and impressions. If there’s no significant drop explaining the decline in organic traffic you noticed, explore other areas in GSC.

Check the ‘search type’ options beyond the default ‘web,’ such as images and news, to see if the drop in clicks is isolated to these. If still nothing is found, move from ‘search results’ to ‘discover’ and compare the same dates to see if you’ve lost Discover traffic.

3. Investigate different sections of your site

Start by looking at your results where queries are selected by default. Change this to pages, and sort the table by clicks difference. If most of the losses are from a single page or post, you’ve identified your culprit.

Are the losses coming from a number of pages within the same subfolder or a range of posts? Ideally you have your posts in a subfolder, like /blog/, to make them easily identifiable. And depending on the structure of your site or nature of your business, subfolders that include /services/ or /courses/ or /collections/ will also help you to identify any specific issues. 

Investigate that further.

Create a page filter and use a subfolder as identified above. This will show you the clicks for the entire subfolder, whether that be /blog/ or /collections/ or /courses/. Break it down even further and see if the drops are comparative across all pages or isolated to a small range of pages.

4. Investigate branded vs non-branded queries

Whether you’ve already identified the problem area of your site or not, you should double-check your branded vs non-branded queries.

To do this, maintain your previous comparison but remove the page filter. Create a ‘query’ filter with ‘queries containing’ and enter your brand name. Consider variations in how people search for your brand, and use the common term.

Analyse how clicks generated by branded queries compare over the two periods. If the drop in clicks is lower than previously identified, you have an issue with non-branded queries. Change the query filter to ‘queries not containing’ and you will likely see a significant drop in clicks. Check the most impacted pages and follow the process in step 3.

If the drop is higher, then you have a significant decline in branded queries. Possible reasons include:

– Previous marketing campaigns have ended.

– Increased paid search budget capturing branded clicks, reducing organic traffic.

– Fewer people searching for your brand, possibly due to seasonal trends or a concerning drop.

Now you know where the issue is isolated to

Now that you know where the issue is isolated, it’s time to correct it.

But what exactly is the issue?

There could be many factors influencing your specific problem. Here are some checks you should perform, especially if your issue is with non-branded queries dropping:

1. Check if a noindex tag has been added to your pages/posts.
2. Were there any changes to URLs
3. Check if a Google core update has been rolled out.
4. Use Semrush or Ahrefs to identify if the problematic pages/posts previously enjoyed a featured snippet.
5. Identify any new competitors in the SERP or if Google has changed the layout of the SERPs.
6. Determine if seasonal trends could be affecting your traffic.

Identifying the problem can sometimes be straightforward, but if you’re struggling to pinpoint it, I recommend engaging an experienced SEO professional.

What you should do moving forward

For your mental health, you don’t want to see huge drops in your organic traffic. Whilst this can often be out of your control, there are steps you can take to minimise the impact and identify problems early.

Here are some recommendations.

Monitor your search traffic regularly

Don’t rely solely on monthly reports. A poor week at the end of the month can be masked, and by the time the next report comes around, you’re 5-6 weeks into a downward trend. This delay can leave you facing tough questions about what went wrong.

If you have an SEO agency, ask for weekly reports or develop a dashboard to check in yourself.

Monitor your share of clicks

We use SEOMonitor to track the visibility of different keyword groups, each aligned with various pages and sections of client websites. SEOMonitor provides:

• The share of clicks for our site and competitors.
• The search visibility for our site and all nominated competitors.

By keeping an eye on the competition, we can quickly identify if they’re capturing our organic traffic.

Monitor search trends

Using SEOMonitor, we can forecast search demand for different keyword groups over the next 12 months. This valuable data helps us understand whether to expect higher or lower demand, setting realistic expectations for organic traffic.

Monitor Google’s movements

It’s always a great idea to consistently understand how the SERPs look for your key queries. Google is always testing new features and some of them can have significant influence on your organic traffic or the traffic going from Google to any website (other than their own).

Again, SEOMonitor shows us the total searches for our keyword groups and then identifies how many of them are actually available as clicks due to the range of different Google features.

Conclusion

Consistent monitoring of your search visibility is crucial to maintaining and improving your organic traffic. 

Regular audits, competitive analysis, and trend forecasting can help identify and address potential issues before they escalate. If this process feels overwhelming, consider partnering with a trusted search marketing agency to ensure your strategy is both effective and manageable. Their expertise can provide the insights and support needed to navigate the complexities of SEO and keep your traffic on the right track.