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Many thanks Dirk, looks like you've found the problem!  Much appreciated!

Thanks for the replies everyone!  I've had a closer look at our backlinks and there a few low quality ones in there, but the vast majority seem okay to me.

One thing I have noticed while digging about in more depth in WMT is that there is not a noticeable decline in clicks or impressions within the "Search Queries" section.  Does this suggest there is an issue with how our GA is recording the visits from organic?

The domain name is www.edinburghbicycle.com.

Hi Laura,

It was indeed the timing that made me suspect Penguin!  Our backlink profile could be better.  Is there a good way of remedying this sort of backlink issue?

The maintenance was just an update to the web server hardware and OS, and I'm not aware of any new competitors, so I suspect it is Penguin that is causing the drop in traffic.

Hello!

I've noticed a drop in organic Google traffic to our ecommerce site. The drop started on the 1st December 2014. The difference compared with last year is around -25%.

I've taken a look at landing pages for the organic Google traffic:

Homepage: -40%
Product pages: -31%
Category pages: -7%
Blog pages: -7%

On the 1st December our site was down for a few hours in the early morning for some scheduled maintenance.  I got a couple of emails from Google Webmaster Tools letting me know that there was an "Increase in server errors" and "Googlebot can't access your site". Once the site maintenance was complete there haven't been any further emails from Google about this.  I doubt the site being down is the cause of the drop in traffic.

I suspect it may have been caused by the latest Penguin updates around the end of November 2014. Can anyone advise if this sounds like it is the cause, and why the homepage and products pages have been hit so severely?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!