We analyzed the integrated postulation maturation of 1,600 SaaS companies to observe the SEO strategies that enactment champion in 2024…

…and those that enactment the worst.

In this article, we’re looking astatine the companies that lost the top magnitude of estimated integrated traffic, twelvemonth over year.

• We analyzed 1,600 SaaS companies and utilized the Ahrefs API to propulsion estimated monthly integrated postulation information for August 2023 and August 2024.
• Companies were ranked by estimated monthly integrated postulation nonaccomplishment arsenic a percent of their starting traffic.
• We’ve filtered retired postulation nonaccomplishment caused by website migrations and URL redirects and acceptable a minimum starting postulation threshold of 10,000 monthly integrated pageviews.

This is simply a database of the SaaS companies that had the top estimated monthly integrated postulation nonaccomplishment from August 2023 to August 2024.

RankCompanyChangeMonthly Organic Traffic 2023Monthly Organic Traffic 2024Traffic Loss

1	Causal	-99.52%	307,158	1,485	-305,673
2	Contently	-97.16%	276,885	7,866	-269,019
3	Datanyze	-95.46%	486,626	22,077	-464,549
4	BetterCloud	-94.14%	42,468	2,489	-39,979
5	Ricotta Trivia	-91.46%	193,713	16,551	-177,162
6	Colourbox	-85.43%	67,883	9,888	-57,995
7	Tabnine	-84.32%	160,328	25,142	-135,186
8	AppFollow	-83.72%	35,329	5,753	-29,576
9	Serverless	-80.61%	37,896	7,348	-30,548
10	UserGuiding	-80.50%	115,067	22,435	-92,632
11	Hopin	-79.25%	19,581	4,064	-15,517
12	Writer	-78.32%	2,460,359	533,288	-1,927,071
13	NeverBounce by ZoomInfo	-77.91%	552,780	122,082	-430,698
14	ZoomInfo	-76.11%	5,192,624	1,240,481	-3,952,143
15	Sakari	-73.76%	27,084	7,106	-19,978
16	Frase	-71.39%	83,569	23,907	-59,662
17	LiveAgent	-70.03%	322,613	96,700	-225,913
18	Scoro	-70.01%	51,701	15,505	-36,196
19	accessiBe	-69.45%	111,877	34,177	-77,700
20	Olist	-67.51%	204,298	66,386	-137,912
21	Hevo Data	-66.96%	235,427	77,781	-157,646
22	TextGears	-66.68%	19,679	6,558	-13,121
23	Unbabel	-66.40%	45,987	15,450	-30,537
24	Courier	-66.03%	35,300	11,992	-23,308
25	G2	-65.74%	4,397,226	1,506,545	-2,890,681

For each of the apical 5 companies, I ran a five-minute investigation utilizing Ahrefs Site Explorer to recognize what whitethorn person caused their postulation decline. 

Possible explanations see Google penalties, programmatic SEO, and AI content.

Causal20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	307,158	1,485	-305,673	-99.52%
Organic pages	5,868	547	-5,321	-90.68%
Organic keywords	222,777	4,023	-218,754	-98.19%
Keywords successful top 3	8,969	26	-8943	-99.71%

Causal is simply a concern level for startups. They mislaid an estimated 99.52% of their integrated postulation arsenic a effect of a Google manual penalty:

This communicative mightiness dependable familiar. Causal became internet-famous for an “SEO heist” that saw them clone a competitor’s sitemap and usage generative AI to people 1,800 low-quality articles like this:

Google caught upwind and promptly issued a manual penalty. Causal mislaid hundreds of rankings and hundreds of thousands of pageviews, virtually overnight:

As the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar shows, the offending blog posts are present 301 redirected to the company’s (now overmuch better, overmuch much human-looking) blog homepage:

Contently20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	276,885	7,866	-269,019	-97.16%
Organic pages	32,752	1,121	-31,631	-96.58%
Organic keywords	94,706	12,000	-82,706	-87.33%
Keywords successful top 3	1,874	68	-1,806	-96.37%

Contently is simply a contented selling platform. They mislaid 97% of their estimated integrated postulation by removing thousands of user-generated pages.

Almost each of the website’s postulation nonaccomplishment seems to stem from deindexing the subdomains utilized to big their members’ penning portfolios:

A speedy Google hunt for “contently writer portfolios” suggests that the institution made the deliberate determination to deindex each writer portfolios by default, and lone relist them erstwhile they’ve been manually vetted and approved:

We tin spot that these portfolio subdomains are present 302 redirected backmost to Contently’s homepage:

And looking astatine the keyword rankings Contently mislaid successful the process, it’s casual to conjecture wherefore this alteration was necessary. It looks similar the escaped portfolio subdomains were being abused to beforehand CBD gummies and pirated movies:

Datanyze20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	486,626	22,077	-464,549	-95.46%
Organic pages	1,168,889	377,142	-791,747	-67.74%
Organic keywords	2,565,527	712,270	-1,853,257	-72.24%
Keywords successful top 3	7,475	177	-7,298	-97.63%

Datanyze provides interaction information for income prospecting. They mislaid 96% of their estimated integrated traffic, perchance arsenic a effect of programmatic content that Google has since deemed excessively debased prime to rank.

Looking astatine the Site Structure study successful Ahrefs, we tin spot implicit 80% of the website’s integrated postulation nonaccomplishment is isolated to the /companies and /people subfolders:

Looking astatine immoderate of the pages successful these subfolders, it looks similar Datanyze built thousands of programmatic landing pages to assistance beforehand the radical and companies the institution offers data for:

As a result, the bulk of Datanyze’s dropped keyword rankings are names of radical and companies:

Many of these pages inactive instrumentality 200 HTTP presumption codes, and a Google tract hunt inactive shows hundreds of indexed pages:

In this case, not each of the programmatic pages person been deleted—instead, it’s imaginable that Google has decided to rerank these pages into overmuch little positions and driblet them from most SERPs.

BetterCloud20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	42,468	2,489	-39,979	-94.14%
Organic pages	1,643	504	-1,139	-69.32%
Organic keywords	107,817	5,806	-102,011	-94.61%
Keywords successful top 3	1,550	32	-1,518	-97.94%

Bettercloud is simply a SaaS walk absorption platform. They mislaid 94% of their estimated integrated postulation astir the clip of Google’s November Core Update:

Looking astatine the Top Pages study for BetterCloud, astir of the postulation nonaccomplishment tin beryllium traced backmost to a now-deleted /academy subfolder:

The pages successful the subfolder are present deleted, but by utilizing Ahrefs’ Page Inspect feature, it’s imaginable to look astatine a snapshot of immoderate of the pages’ HTML content.

This short, highly generic nonfiction connected “How to Delete an Unwanted Page successful Google Docs” looks a batch similar basal AI-generated content:

This is the benignant of contented that Google has been keen to demote from the SERPs.

Given the timing of the website’s postulation driblet (a tiny diminution aft the October halfway update, and a precipitous diminution aft the November halfway update), it’s imaginable that Google demoted the tract aft an AI contented procreation experiment.

Ricotta Trivia20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	193,713	16,551	-177,162	-91.46%
Organic pages	218	231	13	5.96%
Organic keywords	83,988	37,640	-46,348	-55.18%
Keywords successful top 3	3,124	275	-2,849	-91.20%

Ricotta Trivia is simply a Slack add-on that offers icebreakers and team-building games. They mislaid an estimated 91% of their monthly integrated traffic, perchance due to the fact that of bladed contented and mediocre on-page acquisition connected their blog.

Looking astatine the Site Structure report, 99.7% of the company’s postulation nonaccomplishment is isolated to the /blog subfolder:

Digging into the Organic keywords report, we tin spot that the website has mislaid hundreds of first-page rankings for high-volume keywords similar get to cognize you questions, comic squad names, and question of the day:

While these keywords look powerfully related to the company’s halfway business, the nonfiction contented itself seems precise thin—and the leafage is covered with intrusive advertizing banners and pop-ups (a communal proposal for wherefore immoderate sites were negatively impacted by caller Google updates):

The tract seems to amusement a tiny betterment connected the backmost of the August 2024 halfway update—so determination whitethorn beryllium hope yet.

Final thoughts

All of the information for this nonfiction comes from Ahrefs. Want to probe your competitors successful the aforesaid way? Check retired Site Explorer.