Why Your Google Rankings Dropped and How to Bring Them Back

It doesn’t matter how good you are at SEO; Google ranking drops can happen to anyone and for any reason. Sometimes drops happen as expected, like after website changes, but others can catch you by surprise. Algorithm updates, SERP changes, and fierce competition are among the most notorious.

But knowing about these challenges is one thing; successfully identifying them is another.

This guide can help you manage these situations systematically. It breaks down the most common reasons for ranking drops, the tools to get ranking data from, and expert tips on how to get Google rankings back if your positions dropped.

1. Analyze what’s causing those rankings to drop

Rankings naturally fluctuate up and down, but be careful not to get blindsided by serious SEO issues that require immediate action. This is where reliable data becomes essential, as it helps you plan the most effective recovery steps, like the ones outlined below. Read each step carefully to get your rankings soaring again. 

Anthony Barone

Co-Founder & Managing Director of StudioHawk UK

People freak out with ranking drops, but there is always context and usually an explanation for it, sometimes it’s harder to find the answer of why, but most of the time, you should be able to figure it out.

Check website changes and updates

Begin by scouring for any recent website changes. This might look like technical updates, redesigns, content changes, or URL structure adjustments. It’s common for ranking fluctuations to occur immediately after you make changes, but they tend to stabilize over time. But if your rankings don’t recover after a few days or weeks, you’ll need to investigate further. Even small updates can have a lasting impact on rankings, so check your change logs for any recent attention-worthy updates.

Make sure Google is indexing your important website pages

Sometimes your rankings drop for obvious reasons. Chief among them is that your essential pages aren’t appearing in Google’s index. Go to Google Search Console or use a site: search operator in Google search to see if this is the reason why. 

For instance, search operators, specifically site: search, help you quickly check if Google can find your pages. If important pages are missing on the SERPs, you either have major technical issues or penalties from Google that are de-indexing your pages. Both situations require you to dig deeper to confirm the cause. 

Unlike a simple site: search, Google Search Console data shows you which pages aren’t indexed and why. Pay special attention to important pages that should be indexed but aren’t. Some of them may appear in the Why Pages Aren’t Indexed section of the Page indexing report. Find out why Google chose not to index them. Common causes of indexing errors in Google Search Console include accidental noindex tags, robots.txt blocking, and server errors blocking Google’s access.

Check what Google Search Console and Google Analytics are showing

Continue working in Google Search Console to accelerate your analysis. It will give you a broad idea of how Google organic traffic has changed over time. Use it to see your pages’ average ranking positions, identify the pages and queries that lost traffic, and review page-link click-through rates, impressions, and clicks. This data helps you determine when and where Google rankings dropped and their possible causes.

Now, go to the Search results under the Performance report. Use the Compare feature to see your data year-over-year or across custom date ranges. You can compare both periods to find out when rankings were good and when they dropped. It also reveals the patterns behind the drops.

Look for:

• Average position changes for your key pages and queries
• Which pages and queries saw significant drops
• Click-through rates and impression trends

Narrow down your analysis by filtering data by country, device, or page type. This helps you spot if and when the drop affected specific segments of your traffic. 

Anthony Barone

Co-Founder & Managing Director of StudioHawk UK

I go to Google Search Console to see what has happened in the clicks/impressions/CTR stats, what pages have been impacted, and what drops have occurred. It is extremely helpful to see where the drops have come from, is it mobile vs desktop? Is it location-based? Have there been technical issues that have impacted certain pages and they’ve dropped off? Did anything happen in the industry to affect search? SEO doesn’t live in a vacuum so external factors may impact – hence a brand search, quick trends search and news search about the business/industry.

The next step is to go to Google Analytics 4. This feature shows you how the changes that occurred impacted your traffic and user behavior. To check organic traffic trends, go to the Traffic Acquisition report under the Acquisition section. Use custom date ranges when comparing the data to identify when the drop first occurred. The report will show statistics for all traffic types: organic, direct, paid, referral, and others.

To find out how users interact with your site, go to the Pages and Screens report under the Engagement section. Select Page path and screen class. GA4 will provide data on metrics like engagement rate, user engagement, engaged sessions, average engagement time per session, and more. Although these metrics can’t directly influence rankings, low engagement could point to user experience problems and lead to Google ranking drops.

Use SEO tools

Beyond Google’s proprietary tools (whose tracking data require quite a bit of time to gather), you can use third-party SEO tools like SE Ranking to access comprehensive data—and faster. You can also get the best of both worlds by connecting SE Ranking with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts. This is a great way to manage and centralize all your keyword ranking data. 

SE Ranking’s Keyword Rank Tracker provides comprehensive, well-structured, and accurate keyword ranking data. You’ll also get keyword metrics like current positions, search volumes, SERP features, our Content Score metric, visibility, and more. 

To start tracking these metrics, set up your project. If you’re new to SE Ranking, here’s a quick video guide that explains how to create your first project. The tool will start gathering your ranking data as soon as you add your website and keywords.

• To see your keyword ranking drops, go to the Detailed tab. Pay special attention to the dynamics column in the rankings table, where red numbers quickly show position losses. You can also use quick filters to display keywords with dropped rankings.

You can also check your keywords’ ranking position and SERP details for more insights.

• To confirm if there is a steady ranking drop when analyzing ranking dynamics, select your preferred time period (from current to 2 years).

• Go to the Historical tab to compare current ranking positions with baseline results (the day you added your project). This big-picture view will reveal major trends that help you decide what to do next. 

Please note that position changes prior to the start date of your existing project will not be available. It may take a bit of time to gather enough data to analyze your dynamics effectively.

• Check pages with lost positions. Go to the Summary tab, scroll down to the Pages block, choose the Dropped subtab, and click View all to access details.

Measure the impact of the ranking drop

Once you have collected data on all search queries and pages with ranking drops, you can start investigating. You’ll want to start, however, by measuring the impact of these drops and organizing the data you collect. 

For example, our Rank Tracker lets you do more than analyze platform dashboards. You can also use our API to export data to Google Sheets, create custom Looker Studio dashboards, or integrate with other tools—you get to analyze data your way.

Always list any search queries showing steady ranking declines. Note each query’s current and previous rankings, its place in the keyword cluster, position losses, content type, page indexing status, and other relevant details. Patterns often become clear once you arrange your data like this. You may even discover that your ranking drops are site-wide or limited to specific pages.

2. Exclude external ranking drop factors 

Before doing a deeper site assessment, you’ll need to figure out if you actually have any control over the ranking drops that occurred.

Check Google Search Console data for manual penalties 

Manual penalties are rare, but don’t overlook them. Check Google Search Console’s Manual Actions report to see if Google took any manual actions against your site. These are usually issued for serious Google spam policy violations. Here are a few manual actions to look out for:

Manual actions cause serious damage to your rankings, especially because they don’t allow you to pull your website (or its pages) from the search index.

To find out if you have one or not, go to GSC > Security & Manual Actions > Manual actions.

You’ll see a ‘No issues detected’ notice if everything is fine. Otherwise, GSC will show you any detected issues, and you can click on them for more details. Learn how to fix these issues here.

Maybe Google algorithm updates are to blame

Google algorithm changes are among the most cited reasons for ranking fluctuations. Google strictly prioritizes its users, with the end-goal of providing the most helpful and relevant answers. If your site doesn’t align with this sentiment, it may fall behind on the SERP.

For example, in 2024 alone, there were 7 updates (4 Core and 3 Spam) that affected ranking algorithms. Each update prompted Google to to weigh website factors and signals differently. Beyond these updates, Google faced a major search ranking bug on August 15. It impacted numerous search results and lasted almost 5 days.

Core updates can impact how Google evaluates content quality, authority, and relevance. The effects of these changes would be dramatic for you if, let’s say, your website no longer aligned with the new search intent or ranking factors. These updates impact a substantial percentage of sites, many of which rely heavily on ranking factors like keyword usage, backlinks, and user engagement.

Spam updates, on the other hand, target sites that engage in spammy practices or violate webmaster guidelines. While these updates don’t have a broad effect, they specifically target websites that try to thwart Google’s spam policies. 

The next step is to check if algo updates are to blame for your Google ranking drops. Our Rank Tracker can help speed up this process. It features Average Position, Traffic Forecast, and Search Visibility charts with Google update symbols at each point of the analyzed period. Hover over them to get more details about the updates. You’ll know if Google is to blame if the chart shows that your Google rankings dropped dramatically right after the update.

Study up on the competitors you lost your rankings to

If the above reasons don’t explain your ranking losses, try looking around to see if any competitors have replaced you for the queries your Google rankings dropped for. Your competitors might have improved their content quality to better serve user intent, built more high-quality backlinks, optimized for more relevant keywords, or made other improvements that gave them an edge over your pages.  

To catch the advantages competitors have over you, enter the competitor domain into the Competitive Research tool and go to the Organic Traffic research section. It will present a detailed overview of their organic performance.

• You will be first taken to the Keywords tab. Scroll down to view a detailed table of their top traffic-driving keywords, along with key SEO metrics for each term, such as keyword difficulty, ranking position, search volume, search intent, the SERP features keywords can trigger (filter these by the features that link to the analyzed domain), estimated traffic, and more.

• If your prospect is actively building new backlinks, go to the Backlinks section of the Overview dashboard, where you can see the trend. It will also show you the total backlink count. Perform a detailed backlink analysis by clicking on it.

• Go to the Competitors tab under the Organic Traffic research section to analyze the keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t. Select the Compare with your domain option to get more keyword data for each.

• Next, go to the Pages tab to uncover competitor pages driving the most organic traffic. Focus on estimated total traffic, the total number of keywords each page ranks for, and the keyword distribution by intent. In addition, use the option next to each URL to perform an on-page SEO analysis. This will help you dive deeper into the page’s content, link profile, and other crucial metrics.

With SE Ranking, you can also monitor competitor rankings alongside yours and see how their rankings compare to yours. If they’re climbing while you’re dropping, it’s time to find out what they’re doing differently.

These only make up a few of the many ways to analyze your competitors’ organic strategies. Check out our full guide for more hands-on insights into your online competition.

Find out how the SERP changed 

Another major factor contributing to ranking volatility is Google’s quick experimentation pace with search results. 

Google is constantly coming up with new ways to provide the best possible experience for its users. With this goal, the search giant is constantly tweaking its SERP layout, moving elements around and adding new features. AI Overviews, for example, are triggered by 18.76% of keywords in US desktop SERPs, according to our November research. And Google isn’t slowing down, already introducing more AI SERP elements. This includes planning capabilities, AI-organized search results, and an ask-with-video feature in Google Lens. 

With things moving this fast, tracking AI Overviews manually is nearly impossible. This good news is that you don’t have to. SE Ranking’s AI Results Tracker can help you pinpoint which of your keywords trigger AIOs in search. It can also help you figure out which links and domains are used as sources, how their rankings change over time, the overlap between AIO links and organic results, and how all of these factors affects your traffic.

Even if the presence of various SERP features doesn’t push your rankings down, it can still affect how many clicks your site gets. One major factor is the rise of zero-click results, where users get answers directly from the results page instead of clicking through to your site. These results include, but are not limited to, featured snippets, knowledge panels, People Also Ask boxes, AI Overviews, quick results like weather forecasts and facts, etc.

The point here is that you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure to monitor SERPs for your target keywords and optimize content for the new SERP features they trigger.

To find out which of your target keywords have them, go to the Rankings > Detailed section in your project. In the SERP features column, the blue icon means your page appears as a SERP feature, grey means another site owns this SERP feature, and no icon means that the keyword has no SERP features.

3. Check your site’s technical health for any changes

If external factors aren’t behind your ranking drops, it’s time to figure out if there are any technical issues that are dramatically impacting your rankings. One efficient way to spot them is running a comprehensive site audit. 

SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool checks your site against 115+ parameters. It uses this data to generate a detailed Issue report, how critical each issue is, and how to fix it.

If you have many severe technical issues, this will be reflected in your health score, which looks at factors like site security, redirects, broken links, content, and more. Since our version 2.0 upgrade, the health score looks at both error severity and the number of affected pages. This gives you a more accurate picture of your website’s technical performance.

After launching your audit, pay special attention to any technical issues that could be causing your search rankings and organic traffic to dip.

• Slow page speed. Users don’t like slow websites. Neither does Google. Google also considers page speed to be a major ranking factor, according to its Core Web Vitals metric standards. Comb through all of the slow-loading pages found in the report, optimize your HTML code, and check the page’s server performance.

• Robots.txt file changes. Robots.txt files tell search engines what they can and can’t crawl. Verify that your robots.txt hasn’t been modified to block Googlebot from accessing important content (especially after doing a website migration). Even a tiny modification could accidentally block important pages from Google and lead to ranking drops.

• 4XX pages. These are error pages, with the ‘404 page not found’ being the most common. These errors can cause users to hit dead ends, which results in traffic loss. Internal links to 4XX pages also waste Google’s crawl budget and can weaken your overall site quality signals. Fix broken links by either removing them or replacing them with accessible pages.

• Redirects. Too many (or broken) redirects can slow down your site a lot. Ensure that all of your redirects serve a clear purpose and are properly set up (using 301 redirect). Avoid creating endless loops or chains.

• Canonicals. Missing, multiple, or incorrectly configured canonical tags make it difficult for search engines to figure out which version of a page to index and rank. This can cause your ranking signals to split between similar pages. Only implement canonical tags on relevant pages.

• Hreflangs. If your site targets multiple languages or regions, double-check your hreflang tags. They help Google show the right version of your content to the right audience—but only if set up correctly. When users get content in the wrong language or for the wrong region, they’ll likely bounce back to search results, signaling to Google that your page isn’t relevant.

4. Audit your content 

Content problems can trigger ranking drops for two major reasons. First, Google has made content-focused updates, so poorly made content doesn’t stand a chance. Second, if your content lacks experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), it could be seen as low-quality and lose positions. At the very least, you might have made content changes or removals that affected your rankings.

Begin by reconfirming that your content needs to be improved. Ask questions like: Which pages need improvement? How important is it to rank for a specific keyword? Do you have outdated content that needs refreshing, or should it be left as is? Do you need to enhance EEAT signals, or should the content be deleted entirely? 

Each of these questions touches on aspects of the content audit that you should perform regularly. Doing so improves both organic traffic and user engagement metrics, and should ideally be done proactively. Don’t wait until your Google rankings drop to make changes.  

Beyond that, make sure critical content issues don’t put additional optimization obstacles in your path. Here are some critical ones: 

• Duplicate content: This could include identical, scraped, AI-generated (without proper human oversight and added value), and slightly tweaked content. It can reduce the authority of your content, making it harder for Google to figure out which page is canonical and rank it higher. This applies not only to page content but also to meta tags. To rule this out as a reason for a drop in rankings, use our automatic Website Audit reports. Our audit tool  highlights all pages with duplicate content or meta tags so you can quickly jump to and fix them.

Duplicate content issues can appear for many technical and non-technical reasons. There are also many methods for identifying and fixing them. Check out our complete guide on duplicate content for more information.

• Keyword cannibalization can be tricky to spot but could be the ranking (and traffic) drop culprit. Check for pages ranking for the same keyword cluster with similar search intent, as they might be competing against each other. Another method is to use our Insights tool, which flags a list of keywords that might be cannibalizing each other. It also gives you a list of improvement recommendations.

• Keyword stuffing. Excessive use of keywords in an attempt to manipulate rankings is bad practice. Don’t over-optimize your content, as this could lead to Google penalizing your site and users leaving as soon as they see it. For more guidance on proper keyword usage and optimization, check our detailed guide on keyword stuffing.

Remember, quality content that provides value and directly addresses users’ needs will naturally rank higher.

5. Review your website’s backlinks

Backlinks are a crucial ranking factor because they signal to search engines that your site is valuable. Reputable websites that link to your content are essentially vouching for its quality and usefulness. Google progressively value and prioritize your site as more sites with high authority reference your content

However, not all backlinks work in your favor. Some backlinks (and backlink-related issues) can even weaken your backlink profile and negatively impact your rankings.

Lost links

Your backlinks can be removed. This happens for many reasons. For example, the site owner removed or updated the page, deleted the content, or restructured their website. The linking page might have also deleted your link after deeming it as longer relevant. Both scenarios can result in a loss of link juice (value passed). If the loss comes from high-authority websites (with high Domain Trust), it can affect your rankings even more.

To find lost backlinks, use the Backlinks report in the Backlink Checker tool. Open the Lost Backlinks subtab. Each backlink in this tab comes with essential metrics like Domain and Page Trust scores, link type, toxicity score, and more. This helps you determine right off the bat which links are worth the effort and which aren’t. You might even want to replace some links altogether with new, high-quality ones.

Referring domains lost their authority 

Even if your backlinks are still live, check their referring domains, as they might have lost their authority. This can happen due to Google algorithm updates, manual penalties, loss of trust signals, or even deindexing. All of these factors, alone, or combined, can decrease a domain’s credibility.

To monitor how healthy the sites linking to you are, check the Referring Domains report in the Backlink Checker tool. It provides a complete list of active, new, and lost referring domains, along with their Domain Trust score and the number of backlinks from each website. Filter the results to see how many referring domains have low Domain Trust and see if you need to earn more authoritative links.

Toxic links

A sudden influx of toxic (unnatural, suspicious or low-quality) backlinks could also hurt your backlink profile and lower your SERP positions. If this is the case, do away with them.

Begin by conducting a full audit of your backlink profile to identify harmful links. In the Overview section of the Backlink Checker, all backlinks are categorized by toxicity level (high, medium, low, non-toxic). Click on the link count in the High toxicity category to review them in detail.

If you can spot the exact backlinks hurting your site, contact the site owners and politely request they remove them. If this approach doesn’t work, you can add those links to the Disavow list directly in our tool and keep track of them in the Backlink Monitor.

Keep in mind that adding a link to the Disavow tab in our system doesn’t automatically tell Google to ignore it. Export the list and upload it to Google’s Disavow tool to complete its disavowal. But only do this if you deem it absolutely necessary, as disavowing links isn’t very effective. John Mueller explains why in the screenshot below.

6. Stay on top of Google ranking drops

The best way to minimize the impact of rankings drops is to set your monitoring schedule to catch them early. This helps you take action before they hit your traffic hard. Here’s how to do this effectively with SE Ranking tools. 

Track page changes 

Apart from monitoring your overall keyword performance using the full ranking history provided by Rank Tracker, as we covered earlier, you can also keep an eye on specific page changes.

Our Page Changes Monitor tool alerts you via email (or the platform’s notification center) whenever it spots a change to the following page elements; the title, description, keywords, headings, content, canonicals, indexing status, internal links, and more. All you have to do is add your top traffic-driving pages to the tool. The next time your Google rankings drop, you’ll know exactly why with Page Changes Monitor.

For setup instructions, click here.

Get automatic alerts 

Our Insights tool has a similar functionality that helps you keep up with major ranking shifts. It tells you when there are sudden drop in impressions or clicks on your pages or keywords. Getting the drop on this quickly means you can switch focus to these queries and address the cause of the decline. 

All you need to do to see them is connect your SE Ranking project to Google Search Console and go to the Insights tool block titled, Keywords for which impressions or clicks have significantly decreased.

Once there, you’ll see all the keywords and pages found during the selected period, along with recommendations for next steps. For more details on each keyword, like impressions, clicks, differences, number of pages ranking for it, and more data, just click the View all button.

Final thoughts 

Getting to the bottom of Google ranking drops hasn’t always been easy. It still isn’t. But it’s crucial to understand the exact reasons behind it. Once you have that down pat, you can really start getting to the bottom of things—and fast.

Now that you have a reliable framework to piece things together and the tools you need to see the full picture, it’s time to turn theory into practice. No more asking, “Why did my Google rankings drop?” Now you can use this guide as your resource to getting your links back to page one, where they belong.