Find the date first
Open the Performance report in Google Search Console, compare the last six months and find the week clicks started to fall. Compare that date with Google's published core and spam update dates. A drop that lines up with an update points to quality or spam issues; a drop that doesn't usually points to something technical on your side.
Check indexing and technical errors
Look at the Pages report for newly excluded URLs, check that important pages aren't blocked by robots.txt or tagged noindex, and confirm redirects and canonicals point where they should. A site migration, plugin update or theme change is often the hidden trigger.
Look for spam and thin content
Spam comments, hacked pages and auto-generated URLs can drag down the whole site. So can many thin or near-duplicate service pages. Remove or noindex what has no value, and merge overlapping pages into stronger ones.
Review your links
Check whether you lost important links or gained a wave of spammy ones. Rebuild authority with relevant links: suppliers, local organisations, industry directories and genuine press.
Recover in phases and measure
Fix things in a deliberate order (technical, spam, content, local signals, authority) and check Search Console weekly, so you know which change made the difference. Recovery usually takes weeks to months, but each phase should show movement in impressions before clicks follow.
Want us to check this on your own site? Ask for a free audit and we'll send the first fixes we'd make.