Definition
Content decay is the gradual decline in rankings, traffic and citations of a page that once performed well, without anything having changed on the page itself. The content ages, competitors publish better or more recent versions, search intent shifts, or the results page changes shape. It is the natural erosion of content in an environment that does not stand still.
Decay usually follows a recognisable pattern: a page peaks a few months after publication, holds that position for a while and then slowly slides, often losing a few percent of traffic per month. Because it happens gradually, it is only noticed once the damage is large. Sites with hundreds of articles lose a considerable share of their organic traffic this way without noticing, while they are busy publishing new pages.
The causes can be distinguished. Outdated facts (prices, years, tools that no longer exist) make a page less trustworthy. Competition: a newer, more complete article takes over the position. Intent shift: people searching 'AI SEO' in 2026 want something different than in 2023. SERP change: an AI Overview or video carousel takes the clicks. And internal causes: cannibalisation by a newer page of your own, broken internal links or a migration.
You detect decay in Search Console: compare clicks and impressions per page over the last three months with the same period a year earlier, and sort by largest absolute drop. Pages that had a lot of traffic and are losing steadily are the candidates. Then look at the cause per page: has position dropped (content or competition) or only CTR (SERP change)?
The remedy is updating rather than rewriting from scratch: refresh facts and figures, rewrite the intro for the current intent, add missing sub-questions, refresh the FAQ, visibly update the last-modified date and add internal links from new content. An updated page with existing authority usually recovers faster than a new page. Traze tracks performance per published page, flags decay as soon as the trend sets in and schedules a rewrite before the traffic is really gone.