How do you explore the reasons of losing traffic with Google Analytics?

Question

Let's say:

• you had 10k visitors per month on average in the year 2014,
• you have only 5k visitors per month on average in the year 2017

i.e. the traffic has suffered a -50%.

What tools does Google Analytics offer to compare 2 years like this?

Example of what I would be looking for:

1. Easy way to get a table/list of referrals in year 2014 that are no more referrals in 2017, or referrals for which the % of total traffic has dropped between 2014 and 2017

2. More generally than just Referral source of traffic, which other source of traffic has dropped significantly?

About 1., it's the kind of thing I would like to see in Analytics' Analytics Intelligence tool. Is it available?

Answer 1

I finally found a way to do it.

1. First select a date range and a comparison date range:

   

2. Then go to Acquisition > Channels.

3. Click on Referral (or another channel)

4. Choose Sort Type: Absolute Change, go to the bottom of page and choose Show rows: 5000 (by the way if someone knows how to have Show rows: 5000 by default, that would be useful)

5. Go to the bottom of the page: you'll see the highest losses of referral traffic: