Feature · Content health
Catch pages bleeding traffic before you notice.
The most expensive SEO problem isn't a page that never ranked — it's a page that used to rank and is sliding. Slope's content_decay rule (R2) flags these continuously, with the comparison window and delta cited.
What
What it does
Content decay detection compares last 28 days of GSC metrics per page against the prior 28 days. Pages with clicks down >20%, impressions down >15%, or position degraded by >2 spots get flagged. Each opportunity comes with the before/after numbers, the page URL, and a recommended action (refresh content, add internal links, check for technical issues like meta-description rewrites or canonicalization).
Why it matters
The job to be done
- Manual content decay review requires you to look at every page individually in GSC, which nobody does. Slope does it for every page, every day, automatically.
- Early flagging matters — a page losing 10% / month for 6 months has lost half its traffic by the time it shows up in your monthly metrics review.
- Refreshed content recovers faster than new content earns rank from scratch. The ROI on fixing a decaying page is usually 5-10x higher than writing a new one.
- Slope distinguishes 'decay' (you rank but worse) from 'lost' (you used to rank, now you don't at all) — those need different responses.
- After refresh, the impact measurement worker tracks the recovery 14 days later so you see whether the fix worked.
How
What happens under the hood
- 1
Snapshot windows
For each page with GSC data, compute totals for the last 28 days and the 28 days prior. Store the comparison so the UI can show before/after without re-querying.
- 2
Apply decay thresholds
Three triggers: clicks_delta_pct < -20%, impressions_delta_pct < -15%, position_delta > 2.0. Any one triggers an opportunity. Severity = max(percentage drops, position drop normalized).
- 3
Generate recommended actions
Action templates depend on the pattern: position drop with stable impressions → 'check for new competing content'; clicks drop with stable position → 'rewrite title + meta description'; impressions drop → 'check for indexing issues, manual penalty, or topic obsolescence'.
- 4
Re-measure after fix
When you close the corresponding GitHub issue, the impact worker waits 14 days then queries GSC to see if the page recovered. Result lands on the task's impact field.
Related features
Start finding opportunities tonight.
Connect your domain, GSC, and GitHub. First detection runs within minutes. Free tier requires no card.