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Content Decay Finder

Two Search Console exports in, the pages that lost traffic out.

Earlier period

Recent period

Use two periods of the same length. Read in your browser.

4 of 5 pages are decaying, down 273 clicks in total. 1 grew, 0 held steady.

/blog/seo-audit-checklist-110 clicks (-61%)

180 to 70 clicks · 9,400 to 8,900 impressions · position 4.2 to 8.9

Ranks lower than before.

/blog/link-building-70 clicks (-58%)

120 to 50 clicks · 7,100 to 3,000 impressions · position 5.0 to 5.2

Fewer people are searching for it, or Google shows it less.

/blog/old-guide-48 clicks (-100%)

48 to 0 clicks · 2,100 to 0 impressions

No longer shows up in the recent export.

/blog/meta-descriptions-45 clicks (-60%)

75 to 30 clicks · 4,300 to 4,100 impressions · position 6.3 to 6.4

Same visibility, fewer clicks: the title or the result around it changed.

Catching decay early is cheaper than recovering from it.

Find keywords one push from the top with the Striking Distance Keyword Finder.

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SEO guide

Which of your pages are losing traffic, and why

Content decay is the slow loss of clicks on a page that used to perform. Nothing breaks and no alert fires. A competitor publishes a newer version, the topic cools off, or the page slips a few positions, and a year later it earns half of what it did. The way to catch it is to compare two equal periods of Search Console data page by page.

How to use it

  • In Search Console, open Performance and Search results, and open the Pages tab.
  • Set a recent period, for example the last 3 months, and export Pages.csv.
  • Set the period of the same length right before it and export again.
  • Paste the earlier export into the first box and the recent one into the second.

Use periods of the same length and, if you can, the same season. Comparing December with July will flag every seasonal page as decaying.

What counts as decay

A page is flagged when it lost both a real share of its clicks (30 percent by default) and a real number of clicks (5 by default). The second rule keeps a page that went from 2 clicks to 1 from showing up as a 50 percent loss. Both thresholds can be changed.

The likely cause

  • Ranks lower: the average position got worse by more than a place and a half. This is the usual cause, and it calls for refreshing the page.
  • Less visibility: impressions fell without the position moving. Either fewer people search for the topic or Google shows the page for fewer queries.
  • Fewer clicks at the same visibility: position and impressions held, but clicks dropped. Look at the title and at what now sits above you in the results, such as an AI answer or a new feature.
  • Gone from the export: the page earned nothing in the recent period. Check that it still exists and is indexed.

These are readings of the numbers, not a diagnosis. Open the page and the results page before you decide.

What to do with the list

Start with the biggest absolute loss, since that is where the clicks are. Update the facts, add what has changed since you wrote it, improve the title, and link to the page from newer pages that get traffic. Related tools: Striking Distance Keyword Finder for keywords one push from the top, and the Keyword Cannibalization Checker when two of your pages have started trading places.

Frequently asked

Is my Search Console data uploaded?

No. Both files are compared in your browser.

Why is a page in the second export but not the first?

It is new or newly visible, so it cannot have decayed. The tool counts those separately and leaves them out of the list.

Does Bold Pilot track this automatically?

Bold Pilot checks your published articles in Search Console every Monday and flags the ones that need a hand, so you do not have to export two files to find them.