Organic decline audit
An 87% decline from peak traced to a content prune, link decay and AI Overviews, with 330 referring domains behind product redirects.
Audit
Organic traffic vs. peak
-87%
Over 24 months
Backlink decay
-80%
All-time referring domains
Referring domains behind 301s
330
Recoverable product equity
Category terms with no page
6
At peer-competitive difficulty
Context
Organic traffic had fallen sharply from its peak while the domain kept its authority. Leadership needed the cause identified before investing further.
Scope
A full audit of crawl, backlink profile, index history and Search Console, cross-checked against the algorithm timeline and live results. Category terms were sized against competitors ranking at or below the brand's authority.
Findings
The decline traced to a content prune, link decay, and AI Overviews absorbing clicks on top-of-funnel queries. Hundreds of referring domains sat behind redirects on product URLs, and the commercial category terms had no ranking page.