SEO Drift Monitoring

SEO Drift Monitoring

Overview

Capture a known-good SEO baseline and compare later snapshots against it so regressions become visible. The skill combines search-performance data with live on-page checks to surface ranking drops, deindexation, overwritten metadata, directive changes, and missing schema before they quietly cost traffic.

This portable version is adapted from the official seo-drift skill in NotFair.

When to Use

Use this skill when the user asks to:

• baseline or monitor a site's SEO over time;
• check whether a migration, redesign, CMS change, or redeploy damaged SEO;
• compare current search performance and page metadata with a prior snapshot;
• investigate titles, descriptions, canonicals, robots directives, or schema that changed unexpectedly;
• identify rankings or indexed pages that disappeared.

For a one-time comprehensive SEO audit with no historical comparison, use a general SEO audit skill instead.

Prerequisites

Before capturing data:

1. Confirm the site and the key URLs in scope. Prefer top organic landing pages, commercial pages, and any URLs affected by a recent release.
2. Confirm baseline or compare mode. If no prior snapshot exists, use baseline mode and explain that there is nothing to compare yet.
3. Ask where the snapshot should be stored. Use a local seo-drift/ directory alongside the user's other audit reports only after confirming the intended project or reports location.
4. Prefer a connected Google Search Console source for query, page, position, impression, click, and indexation signals.
5. Use a browser or web-fetch capability for current on-page values. Respect robots directives and avoid high-volume crawling.

If Search Console is unavailable, continue only with the on-page comparison and state that ranking and indexation drift could not be measured. Never infer missing Search Console values from a live crawl.

How It Works

1. Choose the comparison boundary

Record:

• the site property and snapshot date supplied by the user or runtime;
• whether the snapshot is a baseline or comparison;