GenGrowthObservation
The magnitude and timing of the change, the affected queries — and pages, where the data allows — and how the brand and non-brand halves of your query set each moved across the windows the detector chose.
Search performance diagnosis
Investigate a sudden drop in organic traffic with your own data
Find out whether your organic traffic really dropped, when it turned, and how much of it held — measured against your own Search Console history, with the comparison windows chosen by change-point detection rather than by you. If what you are really asking is “was I penalized?”, the diagnosis puts the drop next to what your data actually shows, and is explicit about which parts of that question it cannot settle.
Requires a Google Search Console connection
GenGrowth requests read-only Search Console access and asks you to review the selected property. It cannot change your site, your rankings, or your Google account, and the report is computed from your own history rather than from a demo dataset.
Connect Search Console and investigate the drop
No generic demo and no automatic blame. The result is limited to the evidence available in your property, and every claim in it names where it came from.
Connect Search Console to run this
This tool reads your property's daily clicks and impressions. Read-only, and never stored on our servers. The authorization stays encrypted in a cookie in your own browser, so a return visit does not start from the consent screen again.
Connect Search Console
Read-only access. Disconnect any time — from this page, or from your Google account.
What happens when you run the diagnosis
- 1
Answer two questions from your own Search Console
Before anything runs, the tool asks what you saw on the Manual actions and Security issues pages. No Google API exposes either report — the Search Console API publishes sites, sitemaps, search analytics, and URL inspection, nothing more — so an honest tool has to ask rather than pretend it looked. Your answers are carried through the report marked as reported by you, not observed by us.
- 2
Connect Search Console, read-only
One click, revocable at any time from your Google account. The connection can read your search performance history; it cannot publish content, change rankings, or modify your account.
- 3
Change-point detection chooses the comparison windows
The tool reads your daily clicks and impressions and looks for the turn across the full available history. The before-and-after windows are chosen by the detector, never by you — a hand-picked window is a hand-picked conclusion. A dip that did not persist is reported as a transient anomaly, not sold to you as a decline.
- 4
The query mix is split and described
Brand and non-brand queries are separated and each half's movement is described with its coverage attached. Search Console withholds low-volume queries, so the report states how much of your traffic the visible rows actually account for — and stays silent when that coverage is too thin to support a comparison.
- 5
Read the findings in order
Observed changes first, each tied to the numbers behind it. Then the explanations those numbers are compatible with. Then, listed rather than hidden, every check that could not run and where you would need to look instead.
What the diagnosis keeps separate
Diagnosis
The explanations the observed data is compatible with — ranking loss, click-through change, indexing, seasonality — listed rather than ranked. When several fit, the report says so instead of electing one.
Penalty status, kept honest
What you reported from the Manual actions and Security issues pages, printed as your report rather than our observation. A reported issue leads the output, because resolving a manual action is the one recovery procedure Google actually defines. If you answered that you were not sure, the diagnosis says nothing about penalties — including that there is no evidence of one.
Recommendation
A scoped next step tied to the observed segment: which report to open, which pages to look at, and which conclusions the current evidence does not support yet.
Checks that could not run
The check list is fixed and always rendered in full — the checks that found nothing and the ones that could not run, each with its reason. A report that shows only its hits reads as if it examined everything.
Artifact
A comparison record that preserves the chosen windows, the evidence boundary, and the lineage of every claim, so someone else can see what was measured, what was reported, and what was left open.
FAQ
How do I know if my site has a manual action?
Open Search Console and read the Manual actions report — it is the only authoritative source. A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google; when one exists, that report names the violation and Google notifies the property's verified owners. No API exposes the report, so no external tool — this one included — can read it for you. If it says no issues were detected, you do not have a manual action, and the drop needs a different explanation.
What is the difference between a manual action and an algorithmic adjustment?
A manual action is a documented penalty: a named violation listed in Search Console, with a reconsideration process for lifting it. An algorithmic adjustment is Google's ranking systems revaluing your pages — nothing is listed anywhere, no notice is sent, and there is no form to file; improving the site is the only route back. People say “penalized” for both, but only the manual action is something Google will confirm to you.
Can this tool tell me whether I was penalized?
It can situate the question; it cannot settle it. It asks what your Manual actions report says, because only that report is authoritative for a manual action. For the algorithmic case there is no report to read — anywhere — so the diagnosis shows what your own data can support: when the drop started, whether it persisted, which queries carried it, and which mundane causes fit the same curve. It does not confirm causation, and a tool that claims to is guessing.
Can this tool tell me if a core update hit my site?
No. It shows where your drop sits against Google's published update timeline, as orientation — rollouts span weeks and cover a large share of the calendar, so a date overlap is background rather than evidence, and Google adjusts ranking continuously between announced updates, so a miss rules nothing out. Google confirms when updates run; it does not confirm which sites they touched.
What are common causes of a drop that are not penalties?
Most drops are not penalties. Seasonality moves demand before anything on your site changes. SERP feature shifts — an AI Overview or a featured snippet appearing above you — take clicks while rankings hold. Tracking changes and migrations move traffic between reports rather than losing it: a property change, a redirect, a re-tagged analytics setup. And an indexing fault — a stray noindex, a robots rule — imitates a penalty closely while being listed in a different Search Console report entirely. The diagnosis works through explanations like these before anything site-wide is on the table.
Can it prove one root cause?
Not always, and it says so rather than guess. The output separates what the data supports from hypotheses that need further checking. Different problems draw the same curve — a lost SERP feature, a noindex on one template, a seasonal trough — and a tool that always names a single culprit is choosing your conclusion for you.
Can a public crawl diagnose a traffic drop?
Not reliably. Your pages can be public, crawlable, and unchanged while your private search performance has collapsed. A drop lives in the clicks-and-impressions record that only Search Console holds, which is why this diagnosis starts from your property rather than from a crawl of your site.
Is the Google connection read-only?
Yes. GenGrowth requests read-only Search Console access. It cannot change your site, your rankings, or your account, and you can revoke the access at any time from your Google account settings.