Search Console position (SERP rank) improving but CTR declining

[anefarious1]

Anyone else feel like Google Search Console shows that website traffic is gradually dying? I mean like steadily and consistently.

Actually I know that to be the case but Search Console truly confirms it.

Basically....

I often see trends like this....

Over a 3 month period, my average position in the SERPs improves approx. 2 places (say from 7 to 5) yet over the same period (same data set) the CTR declines from say 2.8% to 2.6%

Anyone else see numbers like that? And yes this is for a website with 200,000 pageviews a month so the data is not an anomaly.

Is it no-click mobile use, rich snippets, tons of ads above the results, Knowledge graph, etc. that is causing this worrisome trend?

And why aren't we hearing more about this from webmasters? It's killing me. Traffic way down!

[justpassing]

Is it no-click mobile use, rich snippets, tons of ads above the results, Knowledge graph, etc. that is causing this worrisome trend?

Indeed, the position within the SERP is not the same as the physical position within the page. Depending of your niche, above organic results, you can have:
- several ads,
- news,
- images,
- videos,
- shopping links,
- answer box

So, on mobile, you can easily be bellow the fold, and even several screen down. This can also happens on desktop.

[broccoli]

Check your long tail and unique queries. They account for about a third of traffic and you could be losing them. It's happening to a lot of webmasters at the moment due to the new neural matching algorithm that deals with them.

[anefarious1]

I think it's about certain queries (depends on your niche) websites listings don't even appears until after 3 full swipes on mobile. It's crazy. Google no longer sends as much traffic as they once did. I read that more than half of queries on mobile are no click results. Just one factor among many negative factors these days.

[Malanje]

Not only the CTR is decreasing but also IMPRESSIONS while the POSITION goes up.
It started on a precise date as well.
[ibb.co...]

[broccoli]

That pattern tends to happen when they have taken away some of your long tail queries, so your site is getting ranked for the exact match query but has lost some of the related queries it used to rank for.

There could be a number of reasons for that. It could be the super synonyms algorithm has changed and decided you're no longer relevant to the subject, it could be an algorithmic penalty of some kind (keyword heavy or page trust signals), or it could be the two interacting.

[anefarious1]

@ broccoli

Your explanation is interesting. But if long tail queries are losing ranking wouldn't that show up in the form of less impressions. Even then... If my overall ranking noticeably improves.. how can CTR decline so much? There is a very strong relationship when it comes to SERP position and CTR is there not?

It's not like my title tags are worse. Maybe I'm missing some aspect of your theory. Can you expand on it? Are you saying this isn't something many other webmasters are seeing based on Google approach with rich snippets, more ads, knowledge graph, and just overall no click mobile results? Thanks!

[broccoli]

@anefarious1 Okay, let's try and figure this out and I'll try and be precise with my language. I don't know whether you both have the same problem because I don't know whether your impressions have reduced in the same way as @Malanje's have.

@Malanje's picture doesn't show what happened to the CTR, but there's a clear drop in impressions around the September 27th update when they did a core links/relevance/quality refresh.

If it were just down to snippets then Malanje would still be getting the same number of impressions, the impressions are just what Google returns in the search results to searchers.

A drop in impressions tends to mean you've been removed from "inexact match" queries - you still show up in the same place for your exact match target keywords, the query you tend to check your rankings on - e.g. your page title: "how to treat blue disease". But you've could have been removed from the short tail "blue disease" and the long tail "how can I treat green symptom of blue disease".

The average position measurement is almost useless unless you drill down in search console to the exact page and look at each different query for that page.

You might have been ranking quite highly for some of those short or long tail terms, e.g. you might have been number 1 for "how can I treat green symptom of blue disease", or number 4 for "blue disease", but if you've been removed or demoted from those queries it will change your average position, sometimes up, sometimes down, depending on the overall sum of your position for the queries you are still showing up for.

CTR is also almost useless unless you drill down to the exact page and exact query. You can increase your CTR up by improving your page title and meta description, and over the long term that should improve your rankings, so it is useful to monitor it.

If you change nothing on your site and your average impressions and position have stayed the same or increased, but your total number of clicks have reduced, then that's a clear indication that something suspicious is going on, that either someone else in the serp has created a really good page title and meta description, or more likely, that Google is suffocating your serp with snippets and ads.

So - the important thing is, have your impressions reduced either overall, or on certain pages you had a lot of traffic on? (if so, you've been demoted or removed from inexact queries). Or are your impressions and position the same or increasing, but total number of clicks are down? (if so, you're suffering from Google snippets).

[Malanje]

@broccoli

In my case, I think you're close to the truth. A specific page, with the largest number of visits to the site, is responsible for the data. In relation to CTR, it increased 0.5%.
Yes, I think I have been removed from "inexact match" queries. The page was not changed before and after that date. I do not know what to do, so I'd rather wait and see. There have been so many algorithm updates this year that could be foolish any measures, especially for a person with little knowledge like me.
Thanks.

[anefarious1]

@broccoli

I guess it comes to CTR and average position being misleading (unless you drill down to specific pages) as you said.

Over the last 3 years I have pruned content, shortened articles - making them a much better read and more informative. I have not been rewarded for the effort. In fact, I have a very very similar website which has not lost any traffic because I've kept those articles long and of poor quality.

Of course, there are other factors at play including increased competition (for the website that is declining) but still...

It is frustrating. But I know that's the nature of this business. I truly believe info blogs are going to find it harder and harder to obtain traffic (especially when users are looking for a quick answer) because Google can answer it directly on Google.

[Malanje]

@anefarious1
But that site is an exception in the position value. I can say that in the set of sites I run, I went from a total of 253K to 107K page views when comparing 28 days of November 2018 with the same 28 days of 2017. My conclusions are in the same direction as yours.

Just to be able to analyze dates, if you wish, I leave a 12 month chart of two sites in the Google search console.
[ibb.co...]
[ibb.co...]

[Malanje]

Just to correct the order 253K for 28 days of Nov/17 and 107K for 28 days of Nov/18. It's a huge drop. Portuguese and Spanish web sites.

[anefarious1]

After thinking it over... What makes sense to me is that impression count doesn't equate to the same set of impressions over time. I mean... the impressions could be generated for a different data set of content ie pages.. This means CTR could drop based on this mix. Shouldn't move the needle much but it is true.