marketingskills Traffic Decay Detector
Overview
Identify pages with declining organic traffic, what queries are driving the loss, and which pages are worth refreshing. Works with live GSC/GA4 data (via marketingskills/seo/skills/live-search-console-data) or pasted exports.
Inputs
- Current period GSC data (queries + pages): clicks, impressions, CTR, avg position
- Prior period GSC data (same dimensions, same property)
- Optional: GA4 landing page sessions or conversion data
- Optional: threshold for minimum clicks (default: 10 clicks/period)
If no live data is available, ask the user to paste GSC exports for both periods.
Workflow
- Load GSC data from live connection or pasted export.
- Compare current period vs prior period for each page.
- Calculate absolute and relative change for clicks, impressions, CTR, position.
- Filter to pages with click decline > configured threshold.
- For each declining page, find which queries drove the loss.
- Classify the cause: SERP position drop, CTR collapse, impression loss, or seasonal.
- Surface the queries with the biggest click loss per page.
- Rank pages by total click loss and confidence in recovery.
- Recommend refresh candidates with rationale.
Output Format
## Traffic Decay Report
**Period:** [current range] vs [prior range]
**Pages analyzed:** N
**Declining pages found:** N
### Top Declining Pages
| Page | Clicks (curr) | Clicks (prev) | Change | Primary Query | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /page-url | 1,200 | 2,000 | -800 (-40%) | "keyword" | Position drop (2→6) |
### Top Queries Driving Decline
| Query | Click Loss | Current Pos | Prior Pos | Page Affected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
### Refresh Candidates
Priority-ordered list with reasoning.
### Stable Pages (for reference)
Pages with flat or growing traffic.
Interpretation
- A page losing clicks while impressions are stable likely has a CTR or ranking issue.
- A page losing both clicks and impressions may have lost search volume or been overtaken.
- Pages with high impression counts and low CTR may need title/meta rewrites or featured snippet targeting.
- Seasonal declines should be marked but not recommended for immediate refresh unless the trend is accelerating.
Related Skills
content-refresh-brief— produce a focused brief for any page identified here.serp-authority-mark— check if the page's primary query is winnable.marketingskills/seo/skills/live-search-console-data— live GSC/GA4 data bridge.