How to Analyze Organic Performance Drops After Algorithm Updates?

Since March 2024, organic results have been highly active, with Google core and spam updates causing sharp declines especially on E-commerce websites. These declines were reflected in Google Search Console performance with decreases in clicks and impressions at similar rates. However, while performance reached millions of impressions, the number of clicks remained in the hundreds. This situation was observed more on product detail pages than usual for E-commerce websites.

After Google’s recent core updates, it was detected that Google stopped the Image Pack display in SERP for organic queries targeted by e-commerce sites and for queries containing brand names that affect multi-brand sales websites.

When we provided analysis for the Retail category affected by the core algorithm update, it appears that Google removed the Image Pack display from the queries targeted by these websites during the May–July period.

In this case, product detail pages reaching millions of impressions experience significant losses in impression and avg. position metrics.

According to the sources, it’s important to understand that Google’s broad updates can impact images ranked in Web Search results (image packs, knowledge panels, etc.). (Google’s tendency to remove Image Pack display starts from April 2024 following the March 2024 core update.)

Methods for Analyzing Organic Traffic Drops

When analyzing an organic traffic drop, you can first analyze whether the drop is sector-wide. Then, by examining which queries and pages are experiencing the decline in organic performance, you can determine whether this is seasonal or a technical problem. This allows you to identify the top factors affecting the website’s organic performance.

After the March 2024 core algorithm update, the performance drop occurred particularly on product detail pages. Therefore, the main focus of this analysis has been prepared around the drop on product detail pages.

Sectoral Organic Visibility Analysis in Organic Traffic Drop

You can start by analyzing the SEO visibility of competitors that perform on the same keywords in organic search during the relevant period. This way, you can observe whether the performance drop has an industry-wide impact and not just on the target website.

For this, SEO tools such as Searchmetrics, Ahrefs, and Similarweb can be used.

The visibility graph calculated over position and search volume metrics grouped sectorally based on the 1M keywords tracked by the Searchmetrics tool:

Google Search Console Organic Query & Page Analysis Experiencing a Drop

While the page with declining performance had around 151K impressions, the number of clicks was at the 912 level.

The declining organic query had around 133K impressions, while the number of clicks was at the 82 level.

Ahrefs Target Query SERP Display Analysis

To understand the impact on impression performance of queries experiencing a decline in organic performance, “Organic Keywords” in Ahrefs Site Explorer was used.

Google Image Pack Display / Algorithm

• Ads appear at the top and bottom of the SERP; the organic content in between drives traffic to your website.
• A result that appears as an Image Pack is in search type: web format.
• The link for the image appearing in the Image Pack is reflected in the GSC report as avg. position.
• The title attribute of the image tag includes the page URL, and this is the link that generates impressions/clicks.
• When the Image Pack link is clicked on Google SERP, the user is taken directly to the page. Example: 3 million impressions, only 430 clicks (0% CTR).
• Google’s algorithm selects Image Pack results based on the principle: “The Google Search algorithms select the images as it believes that it is something that would benefit the users.”

Merchant Center Analysis

Because it negatively affects the performance of product detail pages, Merchant Center performance was also examined. Free listings are visible across platforms such as Shopping, YouTube, Google Search, Images, and Lens. Due to the Image Pack removal, Merchant Center free listing performance may not have been reflected in the SERP.

Search Appearance Analysis

GSC Search Appearance reports the rich result display of product pages. Rich results containing product information such as price and stock disappeared, and the SERP performance of the pages was affected.

Google Analytics Pageview & Engagement Analysis

Engagement for out-of-stock products dropped, thus decreasing pageviews and engagement rate, which may have affected SERP performance.

Core Web Vitals Analysis

As of March 2024, the INP metric began to be used in page performance measurement. Some URLs are insufficient on the mobile version, which may reduce organic performance.

Reasons for the Drop After the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update

1. Google stopped the Image Pack display for queries targeted by e-commerce sites and for multi-brand queries containing brand names.
2. Broad updates can impact images in Web Search results.
3. Rich result display for out-of-stock products disappeared.
4. The switch from Infinite Pagination to Classic Pagination may have affected organic performance.
5. There was a loss of authority in branded queries in April 2024.

Measures to Take After the March 2024 Update

1. Redirection plans should be created for products with zero stock.
2. Product content should be optimized.
3. Image optimization of product detail pages should be ensured.
4. Actions should be taken to increase the engagement rate of product pages (Rich Results & Merchant Center).
5. Mobile usability and CWV metrics should be optimized (including INP).

References

• Google Developers – Visual Elements
• Databox – GSC Impressions by Search Types
• SEO Clarity – Google Shopping SEO
• Radd Interactive – New Google Shopping Organic
• Webappick – Organic Listing on Google Shopping
• Merchant Center Documentation
• Google Ads – Performance Guide
• Google – Rich Results
• Reddit SEO Discussion – Impressions Drop
• SEO Hacker – Search Appearance Analysis
• GSQi – Image Pack Rankings