Blog Decay

Blog Decay

Use /blog decay to find pages whose Google Search Console performance has declined quarter-over-quarter. The command compares a current-period export against a previous-period export, flags pages with a 20% or larger decline by default, and recommends the next content action.

Default Offline Workflow

Run the local analyzer against two GSC page exports:

python3 scripts/content_decay.py current.json previous.json

Useful options:

python3 scripts/content_decay.py current.json previous.json --threshold 0.30
python3 scripts/content_decay.py current.json previous.json --metric impressions
python3 scripts/content_decay.py current.json previous.json --format markdown --output decay-report.md

The script accepts JSON lists of page rows with page or url, clicks, and impressions. It also accepts the object shape returned by blog-google when the rows are under a top-level rows key.

Optional Live GSC Export

For live data, use /blog google gsc or the underlying blog-google command to create each period export, then run the offline analyzer:

python3 skills/blog-google/scripts/run.py gsc_query --property sc-domain:example.com --dimensions page --start-date YYYY-MM-DD --end-date YYYY-MM-DD --json > gsc-current.json
python3 skills/blog-google/scripts/run.py gsc_query --property sc-domain:example.com --dimensions page --start-date YYYY-MM-DD --end-date YYYY-MM-DD --json > gsc-previous.json
python3 scripts/content_decay.py gsc-current.json gsc-previous.json --format markdown

Use adjacent periods of similar length for short-term checks. For seasonality, also run a year-over-year comparison using the same date length, filters, search type, device, country, and property. When possible, inspect up to 16 months of GSC history before diagnosing a traffic drop.

Decay Model

The default metric is clicks. Also review impressions, CTR, average position, query and page pairs, device, country, and search appearance deltas before choosing an action.

Severity:

Decline	Severity
20% to 39.9%	warning
40% to 59.9%	high
60% or more	critical

Dropped pages are previous-period pages missing from the current export only after confirming identical filters, sufficient row limits, matching dimensions, and URL inspection. Otherwise mark them as needs_validation, not dropped_out.

Recommended Actions

Use the action as the first triage path only after checking indexation, canonical status, query loss, internal links, backlinks, seasonality, and business value:

Action	Use when
refresh/update content	The page still has demand and likely needs freshness, title, internal link, or section updates.
investigate query shift	Clicks fell while impressions held up, suggesting CTR, rank, SERP, or query mix changes.
consolidate/redirect	The page dropped out or the loss is severe enough that merging into a stronger URL may recover value faster.
prune	The page had very low prior demand and may not justify rewrite effort.

Cross-references

Use blog-google to collect Search Console exports when live credentials are available. Use blog-rewrite after decay detection when the recommended action is refresh/update content and the page is worth improving.