Why organic traffic dropped
When clicks broke from their usual pattern, which pages and queries lost them, and why: lost rankings, a lower CTR at the same rank, less searching, or pages leaving the index.
My organic traffic from Google has dropped and I want to know why. List my Search Console properties first and ask which one to look at if I have more than one (prefer the Domain property, which covers every subdomain). Ask me when I first noticed the drop, then suggest the window and what to compare it with: the period before it, or the same weeks a year earlier for a seasonal site (Search Console keeps 16 months). Then: (1) run the anomalies and overview analyses to show how big the drop is, the day it started, and whether it lines up with a Google ranking update, (2) run declining_pages and declining_queries and split the lost clicks by cause: lost rankings, lower CTR at the same rank, less demand, or pages that dropped out, (3) inspect the pages that dropped out with URL Inspection and the live check, to see whether Google still indexes them and what the page says now, (4) if the drop isn't site-wide, break it down by device and country with the performance report and a comparison. Don't count the last couple of days as part of the drop, because Google is still filling them in, and if a data break falls inside the comparison, say what it affects before drawing conclusions. Finish with the likely causes ranked by clicks lost, and the fix for each.
Why this works
A drop usually comes down to lost rankings, a lower CTR at the same rank, less searching, or pages falling out of the index. Each needs a different fix, so this splits the lost clicks by cause before it suggests anything.