First, check that the measurement itself is working
Before you read anything, confirm the reading is real. A surprising share of the "traffic collapsed" conversations I have end here.
In Analytics, open Realtime and then load your own site in another tab. If you do not appear within a few seconds, the tag is not firing and every number after that is fiction. It usually means the site was rebuilt, or a plugin was replaced, or a consent banner was added and nobody put the tag back.
The other version of this problem is the opposite: two tags firing at once after a rebuild, which doubles everything and makes a flat year look like a good one.
- What a bad reading means. No data in Realtime means fix the tag first and wait a month before judging anything. Nothing you conclude today from a broken tag will survive.
Traffic acquisition, which answers where people came from
This is the report to open first, because a single total hides the only thing that matters. Ten thousand visits from social media and five hundred from search are different businesses.
Look at the channel rows. Organic Search is people who found you in Google without you paying. Direct is people who typed your name or had you bookmarked, and it also collects traffic Analytics could not label, so treat it as a soft number. Referral is other websites. Paid is ads. Organic Social is posts.
For a local service business, the row that decides whether search is working is Organic Search, and the shape of it over twelve months matters more than this month's figure. A flat line since launch is the symptom described in why your website is not converting. A sawtooth that peaks every summer is a season, not a problem.
- What a bad reading means. Organic Search close to zero, with Direct making up most of the total, means the site is being found by people who already know your name. You are not being discovered. That is a search problem, and it is the one local SEO exists to fix.
Landing pages, which answers what is doing the work
The pages report, sorted by sessions, tells you which pages people actually arrive on. On most small business sites the answer is the home page and almost nothing else, and that single fact explains a lot.
A site that gets found for more than its own name has a spread: a service page here, a city page there, a blog post that answers a question. A site where the home page is ninety percent of entries is being found by people searching the business name, which means the rest of the site is not earning anything.
Look at the bottom of the list as well. Pages with zero entries are pages nobody has ever arrived on, and every one of them is either the wrong page or a page nobody knows exists.
- What a bad reading means. Home page only means your pages are not written for the searches people make. The fix is the one in how to find out what your customers actually type into Google.
Search Console queries, which answers what you are found for
This is the screen most business owners have never opened, and it is the most useful one on this list. Search Console shows the actual searches that put your site in front of someone, how many times, how often it was clicked, and the average position.
Sort by impressions and read the top thirty. You are looking for one thing: are these searches from people who want to buy what you sell, or are they your own business name plus a list of accidents?
Then look at the ones where you appear often and are rarely clicked. Appearing five hundred times a month at position fourteen means you are on page two for something people want, and page two is the same as nowhere. Those are usually the cheapest wins on the site, because the page already exists and already ranks.
- What a bad reading means. A query list that is all brand name means nobody is finding you cold. A list full of the right searches at position eleven to twenty means the work is half done and the pages need depth, not replacement.
Search Console pages and coverage, which answers what Google kept
Two things live here. The pages report shows which URLs earn clicks. The indexing report shows which pages Google has chosen to keep and which it has thrown out, with a reason for each.
Read the reasons. "Crawled, currently not indexed" on a batch of pages usually means those pages are thin or near-duplicates of each other, which is what happens when someone generated fifty city pages by swapping the city name. "Discovered, currently not indexed" means Google knows they exist and has not thought them worth fetching. "Excluded by noindex tag" on a page you want found is a settings mistake, and I have seen an entire site sit behind that switch for months after a rebuild.
- What a bad reading means. Pages missing from the index are pages that cannot rank for anything, so this report outranks every other number on the list. Fix it before you commission more content.
Key events, which answers whether any of it turned into work
Traffic is not the goal. Calls and booked jobs are, and Analytics will only count those if someone set it up, which is the sixth screen and the one that is usually empty.
At minimum, three things should be counted: a click on a phone number, a form submission, and a click on the directions link. Without them you are guessing at the only number that pays you, and you will keep arguing about traffic because traffic is the only figure anyone can see.
With them, the arithmetic gets simple. Sessions, calls, and the share of one that becomes the other. A site with fewer visitors and more calls beats the reverse every time, and you cannot know which one you have until this is switched on.
- What a bad reading means. No key events configured means the site has never been measured against its actual job. Set them up today, because the data starts the day you do and not a day earlier.
The drops that are not real
Four things look like a traffic collapse and are not, and knowing them saves an expensive month of panic.
A rebuild without a redirect map. Every old URL that now returns a 404 takes its rankings with it. The cliff is vertical and starts the day the site launched.
A tag that stopped firing. Covered above, and the giveaway is that the drop is to zero rather than to a lower number.
A seasonal floor. Roofing in February and holiday lighting in March look like disasters against their own peaks and are simply the year turning.
A comparison against a spike. One post that did well, one mention that sent a wave, and every month after it looks like decline measured against the wrong month.
What to do with twenty minutes and six screens
Run them in order. Tag firing, channels, landing pages, queries, indexing, key events. Write one sentence per screen. At the end you will have either a search problem, a conversion problem, or a measurement problem, and those three need completely different work.
If the answer is a search problem, my free visibility check reads the public side of it in a few seconds and needs no account access at all.
Frequently asked questions
- What should I check in Google Analytics first?
- Check that the tag is firing by opening Realtime and loading your own site. Then read traffic acquisition by channel, then landing pages. Those three tell you whether the data is real, where people came from, and which pages are doing any work.
- Why did my website traffic drop suddenly?
- The four common causes are a rebuild that broke the old URLs, a tracking tag that stopped firing, a season your trade has every year, and a comparison against an unusual spike. Check the tag first, because a drop to exactly zero is almost always measurement rather than traffic.
- What is the difference between Google Analytics and Search Console?
- Analytics measures what people do once they are on the site. Search Console measures what happened in Google before they arrived: the searches you appeared for, how often you were clicked, and which pages Google has indexed. You need both, and the queries report in Search Console is the one most owners have never opened.
- How much traffic should my website get?
- There is no useful benchmark, because a plumber in one city and a store selling nationally are not comparable. The number that matters is how many visits turn into calls, which is why key events have to be set up before any traffic figure means anything.
- Do I need Google Analytics if I have Search Console?
- Yes, they answer different questions. Search Console stops at the click. Analytics picks up from there and is where you count phone taps, form submissions, and direction clicks, which is the only way to tell traffic from work.
Six screens, or one check that needs no logins.
If you would rather see the outside view first, the visibility check reads what search engines and AI tools can see about your business without touching your accounts. The consultation goes through the rest with you. The consultation is free, and the pricing is published.