Position-drop recommendations find non-brand queries that have started to rank clearly lower over the last 3 completed days than they did over the 25 days before them. It is the rule that looks at the most recent days. The other query rules compare a query with its peers, and the page rule compares two 28-day periods.
These queries are listed together in the site’s Recommendations report, under Check what changed for queries that now rank lower than they did all month. Open the report with the lightbulb with a number in the top bar, or add it to the site with Add report, From a template, Recommendations (see Dashboards & reports). Each entry shows the fall in average position, the clicks at risk and, if the query has left page one (it ranked on page one on average before and ranks below it now), a short note that says so. View query opens the query in the query table over the saved interval.
What to do with a finding
A finding says that a query’s position fell and stayed lower on every recent day. It does not say why. Work through it in this order:
- Search for the query yourself and look at which page ranks, and who ranks above it now.
- Open View query and check the page that ranks and its position day by day. Compare the Clicks per day and Impressions per day in Why this recommendation?: if impressions fell with the position, the page is being shown less; if they did not, the page is being shown lower.
- Look for changes you or others made around the start of the recent days: titles, content, internal links, redirects, a canonical change or a technical problem.
- If the page has lost clicks more widely, see page click-drop recommendations. If the whole site fell at once, see sitewide-drop recommendations.
- Give it a few days if nothing points to a cause. A position can recover without any action, and the finding disappears by itself when a later calculation no longer shows the drop.
A query that has left page one deserves attention first; its entry says so.
What is compared
The rule works inside 28 consecutive completed days of Google Search Console web search data, the same interval the other query rules use. Both site totals and query data must have been fetched and marked final for every day, and the saved dates stay fixed when you change the report’s date picker.
- Baseline: the first 25 days of the interval.
- Recent days: the last 3 completed days, which are not part of the baseline, so a drop cannot hide inside its own average.
Only completed days are used, and Search Console data runs a few days behind. “Recent” therefore means the latest completed days, not today. The Pos.now column in the query table can include the newest preliminary day and may differ from this rule.
Preliminary days are excluded. If newer final data leaves a gap in the required coverage, the calculation waits for complete coverage. An interval that ended more than seven days before the calculation date is treated as stale, and a short warning appears when a listed finding belongs to a rule that needs newer data.
When a query qualifies
Every condition below must be met before a finding is saved.
| Condition | Current rule |
|---|---|
| Not a brand query | Brand queries are excluded. The rule uses configured brand terms, or terms inferred from the site’s domain when none are configured. |
| Enough history | The query had impressions on at least 14 of the 25 baseline days, with at least 100 impressions in them, or 0.1% of the site’s impressions in the interval, whichever is larger. |
| A ranking within reach | Its impression-weighted baseline position is between 1 and 20. A fall from position 40 to 60 is not assessed. |
| Enough recent evidence | Impressions on at least 2 of the last 3 days, and at least 10 impressions in them. A query that simply stops appearing has no position to compare and is not covered. |
| A clear fall | Its position over the last 3 days is at least 2 positions worse, or 25% of its baseline position if that is more. For a baseline of 4 that is 2 positions, for 12 it is 3 and for 20 it is 5. |
| Every recent day is worse | On every recent day with impressions, the position is worse than the baseline average. One bad day among three is not a fall. |
| More than ordinary variation | The fall is larger than the query’s own day-to-day variation, described below. |
| It costs clicks | The clicks at risk are at least 5. |
The query’s own variation
A query’s average position moves a little every day. The rule measures how much this query’s daily position varied during the baseline (its standard deviation, s) and requires the fall to exceed
1.96 × s × √(1/k + 1/n)
where n is the number of baseline days with impressions and k the number of recent days with impressions. A steady query therefore qualifies after a smaller fall than one whose position swings widely. The limit is shown in the evidence, for example “A fall smaller than 0.6 positions would be within this query’s ordinary day-to-day variation.”
Reading the estimate
The clicks at risk are calculated as:
(baseline clicks per day − recent clicks per day) × 28
Clicks per day are counted per calendar day, so a day without impressions counts as zero clicks. For example, a query that earned 22 clicks a day and now earns none has about 620 clicks at risk over 28 days.
The estimate answers “what is at stake if the query keeps losing clicks at its recent rate”. It is not a forecast, and it does not predict whether the position will recover. The last three days can also fall on different weekdays than the baseline, so use it to compare findings, not as an exact figure.
Each finding’s priority is clicks at risk × evidence strength. Evidence strength is a score from 0.5 to 1 that grows with how far the fall is beyond the variation limit, how much baseline exposure the query had and how many recent days confirm the fall. It is not a probability of recovering the position or the clicks. Findings are ordered by priority and are never added together, and the number on the lightbulb counts distinct queries, so a query with both a low-CTR finding and a position drop counts once.
Why this recommendation? shows the position, clicks per day and impressions per day for the baseline and the recent days, the compared dates and the variation limit.
Which findings appear
All active findings appear in the list. The report has no dismissal or snooze controls. When a later completed calculation no longer shows the drop, because the position came back or because the query no longer meets the conditions, the finding becomes resolved and leaves the list. If it qualifies again, it returns.
Saved results and limitations
Calculations run after sync. The findings, rule version, threshold values and numerical evidence are saved. Opening the report reads the saved results and does not run the rule again or change Search Console data. If newer data is incomplete, the earlier result stays visible and the report notes that some suggestions use older data.
- Average position is an average. It changes when the mix of searches, pages or devices that produce a query’s impressions changes, not only when a ranking changes.
- Three days is short. The conditions above are there to keep out noise, but a finding is a prompt to look, not a diagnosis.
- Anonymized queries are missing. Google omits them from query data, so the rule can only assess the queries it receives. See Data & limits and Google’s explanation of Search Console data filtering.
- Web search only. Image, video, news and Discover results are not included.