Travel blogger Valerie Stimac shared some numbers: the position of her website in Google's search results was up, but CTR was down, impressions were down almost 50%, and clicks were down 70%. Her conclusion was that Google eroded organic traffic.

Google's Danny Sullivan joined the discussion on Twitter and he gave some reasons why traffic can be down although the position is up.

Reason 1: the topic is no longer popular

If the website is about a topic that is no longer popular, it is likely that the number of visitors drop. For example, if you had a page about something more popular in 2019 than 2020, impressions could totally drop because of that, even if you ranked higher.

As people travel less during the COVID-19 pandemic, this might be the reason why the website gets fewer visitors.

Valerie accepted the answer as an explanation for the impressions drop. However, it was still unclear why the click-through-rate (CTR) would drop with fewer impressions and higher positions.

Reason 2: other pages are listed in the search results

Danny Sullivan said that the website might be ranking better for a less popular thing, and the page or title or description are less attractive to people.

If a website is listed with uninteresting pages in the search results, it's likely that these pages won't get many clicks from searchers.