The document
Six plays run from reports you already have
Search Console is the only free tool that tells you what Google actually thinks of your site, and most of it goes unread. This takes six specific problems and shows you the report that diagnoses each one.
It starts from the symptom rather than the feature. You pick the thing that is happening to your traffic, and the playbook names the report, the filter and the fix.
What is inside
Four symptoms, six plays, one thirty-day run
Nobody opens Search Console because they want to look at a chart. They open it because something has gone wrong, or because nothing has gone right for a while. The playbook is organised that way.
It fell off a cliff
Traffic that dropped sharply on a date you can name. Which report dates the drop, how to tell an algorithm update from a technical fault, and what to check first.
Nothing ever arrived
Pages published months ago that have never ranked. Indexing status, crawl exclusions, and the difference between not indexed and not good enough.
It has been sliding for months
The slow decline that no single date explains. Query-level comparison over time, and how to find which cluster is leaking rather than which page.
Impressions fine, clicks are not
The most recoverable problem in search. Pages ranking well enough to be seen and not well enough to be clicked, and what to change about them.
The compare report
The most valuable report in Search Console and the least used. How to read two date ranges against each other without fooling yourself.
The thirty-day run
Week by week, what to look at and what to leave alone, so the tool becomes a habit rather than a panic response.
How it works
Start from what is happening, not from the menu
Every play follows the same four steps, so the second one you run is faster than the first.
By the numbers
What you are getting
Before you ask
Questions people send us about this one
Do I need Search Console already set up?
Yes, and verified for your property. If it is not, that is a ten-minute job and the first page of the playbook points you at Google’s own instructions rather than reprinting them badly.
How much history do I need for this to work?
Three months makes the compare report meaningful. With less than that you can still run the indexing and click-through plays, which are the two that do not depend on a trend.
Is this for ecommerce or content sites?
Both. The plays are organised by symptom rather than site type, and the symptoms are the same whether the page sells something or explains something.
What if the data just says nothing is wrong?
That is a real result and the playbook treats it as one. Two of the six plays end with leave it alone and watch, with the specific thing to watch, because acting on noise is how people undo work that was already fine.
