Content Decay
Content Decay finds the pages quietly losing traffic and tells you which are worth saving. Rather than guessing which posts have gone stale, you run the analysis and VisibilityIQ surfaces decaying pages sorted by recovery potential — the ones where the most traffic is recoverable rise to the top. Each page carries a severity percentage, a color-coded likely cause, a recommended action, and a traffic trajectory you can chart. Select a page and it builds a refresh brief. It is action-first; running the analysis spends a little data budget.
What you’ll need
Section titled “What you’ll need”- A project with traffic history, so decline can be measured over time.
- Available data budget. The analysis draws on VisibilityIQ’s data; running it consumes a small part of your project’s monthly data budget.
How to use
Section titled “How to use”Open your project and go to Keywords & Content → Content Decay.
- Click Run to analyze your pages for traffic decay.
- Work the list from the top — it’s sorted by recovery potential.
- Click a page to chart its traffic trajectory and build a refresh brief.
How to read the results
Section titled “How to read the results”Each decaying page summarizes what’s happening and what to do about it:
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Severity | How sharp the decline is, as a percentage |
| Likely cause | A color-coded best guess at why traffic is falling |
| Recommended action | The next step suited to that cause |
| Trajectory | The traffic-over-time chart you can open per page |
Read the list as a priority queue, not a problem list. Because it’s sorted by recovery potential, the top entries are where a refresh recovers the most traffic for the least effort — start there rather than with the steepest decline. The likely cause points the fix: a content-freshness cause calls for updating facts and dates, while a competitive cause calls for deeper coverage. Selecting a page assembles a refresh brief that turns the diagnosis into concrete edits.
Refreshing the data
Section titled “Refreshing the data”The analysis doesn’t run on its own. Click Run again after you’ve shipped refreshes or enough time has passed to see new decline. If your monthly data budget is spent, the page shows a calm notice rather than an error — raise the budget or wait for the next cycle, then run again.