Content Decay Detector
Compare two periods of page-level traffic to find content that is decaying, separate real decline from seasonality and site-wide movement, and rank pages by recoverable traffic.
Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team
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Content decays quietly
An article that ranked well two years ago rarely collapses. It slides, losing a few percent a month as competitors publish fresher material, as the query changes shape, and as the details in the piece go out of date. Nobody notices because no single month looks alarming and total site traffic may still be rising. Decay is only visible by comparing two periods far enough apart, which is why it goes unaddressed on most sites while new content keeps being commissioned.
Separate real decline from everything else
A page down thirty percent when the whole site is down thirty percent has not decayed; something happened to the site. A page down thirty percent while the site is up ten percent has lost considerably more than the headline suggests. Comparing each page against the site-wide change is the first correction, and it turns a list of declining pages into a much shorter list of pages declining faster than their surroundings. Seasonality is the second: a comparison of December with June says more about the calendar than the content.
Updating beats rewriting
Recovering a decayed page is usually cheaper than commissioning a new one, because the page already has links, history and a search engine that knows it exists. The work is normally updating facts and dates, covering what competitors added since, matching the current shape of the query, and improving the title. A page that lost half its traffic and still gets a thousand visits a month is worth more attention than a new article that has none, and that comparison is the one most content plans get backwards.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How far apart should the two periods be?
Far enough for a slide to be visible, which usually means the same months a year apart. Comparing adjacent months mostly measures noise and seasonality rather than decay.
Why compare against the site-wide change?
Because a page down thirty percent when the whole site is down thirty percent has not decayed. Correcting for the site-wide movement turns a long list of declining pages into the much shorter list of pages losing ground faster than their surroundings.
Is all decline decay?
No. A discontinued product, a seasonal topic out of season and a deliberately deprecated page all decline for reasons that need no fixing. The list is a starting point for judgement rather than a work queue.
Should I update or rewrite?
Update first. The page already has links, history and an established position, and rewriting from scratch discards all three. Rewriting is for pages whose topic has changed so much that the existing piece answers a question nobody asks now.
Why prioritise decayed pages over new content?
Because a page that lost half its traffic and still gets a thousand visits a month has demonstrated it can rank, while a new article has demonstrated nothing. Recovery is usually cheaper per visit gained than commissioning something new.
Privacy & Security
Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to Use
Paste page-level traffic for two periods to find which pages are genuinely declining.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.
Related Tools
Meta Tag Analyzer
SEOCheck a page's meta tags for the problems that actually affect indexing and click-through.
Redirect Chain Checker
SEOTrace the full path of redirects (301/302) to find loops or lost link juice.
Robots.txt Validator
SEOValidate robots.txt syntax and check whether a specific URL is allowed or blocked for a given crawler.