Organic traffic dropped 40% in one week. Walk me through how you would find the cause.
What the interviewer wants to hear
- Confirm the drop is real (tracking, data sources)
- Segment by page, query, device, country
- Check technical changes: deploys, robots, noindex, redirects
- Check algorithm updates, manual actions, SERP changes
- Communicate findings and recovery plan
Model answer
First I confirm the drop is real. I compare GA4 with Search Console, because a broken analytics tag or consent change can look like a traffic loss. Then I segment the drop by page, page type, query, device and country to see if it is sitewide or limited to one section. If it is sudden and sitewide, I check for technical causes: a recent deployment, robots.txt changes, noindex tags, canonical or redirect mistakes, server errors, or a JavaScript change hiding content. I use URL Inspection on key pages. If technical checks are clean, I look at dates of Google core or spam updates, manual actions, and whether the SERP changed, for example new AI Overviews. I share a short update with stakeholders early, then a clear root cause and recovery plan.
Can you answer it under time pressure?
Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.
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