Something on your site looks wrong and you don’t yet know which lesson holds the fix. This index is for that moment. Find the line that reads most like what you’re seeing, take the likely cause as a first guess rather than a verdict and go to the lesson it points to.
The causes listed are the common ones, not the only ones. Two symptoms often share a cause and one symptom can have three, so when a row fits only halfway, read the row after it as well. The cause column is short on purpose; the lesson carries the reasoning.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Getting indexed | ||
| A new post is weeks old and not in Google | Not yet indexed, or a noindex or robots.txt block; ask URL Inspection. | How Google Decides Now |
| Page indexing says “Crawled – currently not indexed” | Fetched, then judged thin, too close to another page or unlinked. | Anatomy of a Page That Ranks and Gets Cited |
| Pages sit at “Discovered – currently not indexed” for weeks | Nothing links to it; crawl budget is not a blog problem. | Internal Linking |
| A noindex page still shows in results | robots.txt blocks the page, so Google never reads the tag. Unblock it. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| The whole site dropped out of Google in a day | Site-wide noindex or Disallow, a hack or a manual action. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| Google chose a different URL as canonical | Two URLs share the content; Google picked the other. Set the canonical. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| A site: search shows fewer pages than the blog has | The operator was never a count. Use the Page indexing report. | How Google Decides Now |
| Ranking | ||
| The page is indexed but ranks for nothing | Query too hard for the site now, or a question nobody types. | Keyword Research That Still Pays |
| Posts stuck on page 3 that never move | The queries outrun the site; work those at positions 6 to 20. | Keyword Research That Still Pays |
| The results page is all lists or videos; yours is an essay | Wrong format for the query. Depth does not fix format. | Reading the Results Page |
| A page ranks for queries you never targeted | Google reads it as their answer; use that wording where it fits. | Keyword Research That Still Pays |
| The wrong page ranks for a query another post answers better | Two of your pages compete for one query; merge or re-aim one. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| Two posts swap places for one query week to week | Your own pages competing; Google cannot settle on one until you do. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| A post that ranked for years is slowly sliding | Competitors updated, the query drifted or the facts aged; compare the periods. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| A shorter competitor page jumped above yours | Better format match, or something first-hand yours restates. Length is no tiebreaker. | First-Hand Proof as the Moat |
| One category ranks nowhere while the rest does fine | A weak cluster: scattered posts, no hub page, few links between them. | Topical Authority and Site Architecture |
| The page ranks but the AI Overview cites someone else | Cited pages carry a test, a number, a photograph. Restated advice isn’t. | First-Hand Proof as the Moat |
| An AI Overview appeared on the main query and clicks fell | The query now carries AI-answer risk; score it and add proof. | Keyword Research That Still Pays |
| Traffic and clicks | ||
| Impressions are up and clicks are down | AI Overview and AI Mode appearances count as impressions. Normal in 2026. | Measuring What Matters |
| Impressions fell and average position rose in one step in September 2025 | Google dropped num=100; the counting changed, not the ranking. Annotate it. | Measuring What Matters |
| Clicks dropped on a Search Status Dashboard update date | The update. Wait a full week after completion, then diagnose. | Surviving Updates |
| Clicks dropped on the date of a change you made | Your change: theme, plugin, redirect, URLs or a bulk edit. Reverse it. | Surviving Updates |
| Traffic fell but positions did not | Fewer searches, or a new feature above you. Check impressions by query. | Measuring What Matters |
| Traffic drops every year at the same time | Seasonality. Compare with the same month last year, not last month. | Measuring What Matters |
| Branded searches stay flat while everything else moves | Nobody looks for you by name; the owned audience is thin. | The Owned Audience |
| Far fewer clicks than your other pages at the same position | Title and snippet miss the query, or an AI answer sits above. | Anatomy of a Page That Ranks and Gets Cited |
| Discover traffic vanished | Discover is owed to nobody; it moves with reader interest and updates. | Images, Video, and Discover |
| Visits from ChatGPT and other assistants show nowhere | GA4’s AI Assistant channel has them; AI Overviews stay in Organic Search. | Measuring What Matters |
| Rich results and markup | ||
| The FAQ or HowTo rich results are gone | Google retired them: HowTo in 2023, FAQ in 2026. Nothing to fix. | Structured Data Without the Folklore |
| Breadcrumbs stopped showing under results on a phone | Breadcrumb rich results show on desktop only. | Structured Data Without the Folklore |
| The Rich Results Test passes but no rich result shows | Valid markup makes a page eligible. Google decides whether to show it. | Structured Data Without the Folklore |
| Search Console reports a structured data error | Fix the field named. An error on a retired type changes nothing. | Structured Data Without the Folklore |
| Speed, mobile and security | ||
| The Core Web Vitals report shows Poor URLs | Real visitors at the 75th percentile fail LCP, INP or CLS. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| PageSpeed Insights is low but the Core Web Vitals report is green | The score is one lab run; Google ranks on field data. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| The Mobile Usability report is missing | Retired December 2023 with the Mobile-Friendly Test. Use Lighthouse and a phone. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| Chrome marks the site “Not secure” | HTTPS is missing, or an image or script still loads over http. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| A security issue in Search Console, or “this site may be hacked” | Malware or injected pages. Clean the site, then request a review. | Technical SEO Essentials |
| Links | ||
| Some posts have no internal links pointing to them | Every page that matters needs a link from another page of yours. | Internal Linking |
| The Links report shows few internal links to the main page | The hub has no spokes; link from every related post, anchor descriptive. | Internal Linking |
| Related-post widgets do not seem to count as links | Google follows only a elements with an href; script links may not. | Internal Linking |
| Spammy sites are linking to you | Google’s spam systems ignore them. The disavow tool is for manual actions. | Links and Mentions |
| A manual action names unnatural links, site reputation abuse or spam | A spam policy line was crossed; fix what it names, request review. | Links and Mentions |
| Months of outreach and nothing to show for it | Effort went where return is smallest; move it toward pages people cite. | Links and Mentions |
| Content, updates and AI | ||
| Traffic fell after a large batch of AI-drafted posts | Scaled content abuse is a spam policy, however the pages were made. | Using AI Without Tripping the Spam Policies |
| Traffic fell after changing dates on old posts | Google’s self-assessment names this pattern. Keep the original publish date. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| An updated post dropped | You changed the URL, cut the ranking section or re-aimed the query. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| A redirected old post lost its position | The new page doesn’t answer the old query, or the redirect chains. | Updating, Merging, and Pruning |
| A knowledge panel shows wrong details, or none | Your identity differs across pages and profiles; line them all up. | Entity Signals and the Author Page |
| The video never shows in video results | Video results need a watch page; an embedded video isn’t one. | Images, Video, and Discover |
| Images never show in image search | Missing alt text, meaningless filenames or a CSS background image. | Images, Video, and Discover |
| Local | ||
| The Business Profile was suspended | The business doesn’t meet customers in person; online-only work is not eligible. | Local SEO, If You Serve People in Person |
| The business does not show in the map pack | Local ranking is relevance, distance and prominence; reviews feed prominence only. | Local SEO, If You Serve People in Person |
This index works the way the index at the back of a textbook works: it finds the page for you, and you still have to read it.