Consulting or full implementation?

The wrong choice here wastes either money or time, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.

Your situation	Better fit	Measurement (how to tell)
You have writers and developers, but no recovery experience	Consulting	Your team can ship changes within two weeks of being told what to ship
You are an agency with a client who dropped	Consulting	You want the diagnosis without handing over the client relationship
Nobody internally can execute content or technical changes	Full implementation	Changes would sit in a queue for months
The site is large and the causes overlap	Full implementation	Multiple causes need sequencing that is hard to manage remotely
You want a second opinion before committing budget	Consulting	An agency has proposed work and you want it sanity-checked
You already tried recovery and it did not work	Consulting first	The priority is finding what was missed, not doing more work

The last row comes up often. A site that has already had six months of recovery work needs diagnosis more than it needs execution, because whatever was done either addressed the wrong cause or was never given a reassessment window.

What the engagement includes

• A diagnostic session covering your Search Console data, drop timeline and scope. Why: Most of the value is in the first two hours, when the cause is identified. Everything after that is execution detail.
• A written recovery strategy naming the cause and the reasoning. Why: Your team needs to understand why, not just what, or the next content decision recreates the problem.
• A prioritised action plan ordered by impact. Why: If the next core update arrives early, you want the highest-value work already live rather than half of everything done.
• Clear definitions of done for each item. Why: Consolidate thin pages is not an instruction. Which pages, merged into what, with what redirect, is.
• Check-in calls during implementation. Why: Recovery work generates judgement calls weekly. This page or not. Merge or delete. Wait or ship.
• A measurement plan agreed before the wait begins. Why: The pre-drop baseline and the reassessment window need to be settled up front, otherwise the result is argued about afterwards.

What your team owns

Being explicit about this prevents the most common failure mode in consulting engagements, which is work sitting undone while everyone assumes someone else has it.

• Implementation of every recommendation. Why: Content edits, consolidations, redirects, technical fixes. I advise, your team ships.
• Search Console and analytics access throughout. Why: Diagnosis and measurement both depend on it. Screenshots are not sufficient for this work.
• Holding the freeze. Why: After implementation, the site needs to stay stable so Google can reassess a settled version. Teams used to shipping weekly find this the hardest part.
• Realistic capacity planning. Why: A roadmap that needs six weeks of developer time and gets two hours a week will take a year. Tell me the real capacity and the plan gets built around it.

How the timeline works

Consulting compresses the diagnosis but not the reassessment. Diagnosis takes about a week. Implementation depends entirely on your team's capacity. Then the wait is the same as any recovery: core update demotions are reassessed only at the next core update, which has averaged 82 days apart over the last two years with a range of 7 to 147 days.

Spam, technical and link causes are faster because those systems reassess continuously. Full timelines by update type are in how long recovery takes, and the current rollout status is on the live update tracker.

Before you book anything

Work through the free tools first. Several consulting enquiries resolve themselves at this stage, which is a good outcome for everyone.

• Confirm the drop date against confirmed updates with the date checker. Why: If nothing matches, the cause may be technical or click displacement rather than algorithmic.
• Run the 60-point audit checklist. Why: It produces a weighted verdict on which area is responsible, and that is most of a first consulting session.
• Quantify the loss with the traffic loss calculator. Why: If the monthly cost is small, consulting may not be worth the budget, and it is better to know that first.

If those leave you with a clear answer and a team that can act on it, you may not need this service at all.

Recovery consulting FAQ

What is the difference between consulting and a recovery audit?

An audit is a one-time diagnostic report. Consulting adds ongoing direction during implementation, which is where most judgement calls happen. Sites with capable teams often need the audit only.

Can you work with our existing SEO agency?

Yes, and it is common. Agencies bring me in for a second opinion on a client drop, or to handle the algorithm diagnosis while they continue the growth work.

Do you need Search Console access?

Yes. Diagnosis depends on click, impression and position data over the full 16 month window, and screenshots are not sufficient. Read-only access is fine.

How long is a typical consulting engagement?

Diagnosis takes about a week. Support during implementation usually runs four to eight weeks, then check-ins through the reassessment period, which for core updates is another two to four months.

What if our team cannot implement the recommendations?

Then consulting is the wrong service and full implementation is the better fit. A roadmap nobody executes is worse than no roadmap, because it costs money and delays the next reassessment.