As structural seismic damage develops, the internal force transfer and damage weight relationship of component are constantly changing, and the fixed weighted coefficient is adopted by the traditional weighted method, which cannot reflect the changes in the structural damage state. The structure is a network formed by connecting a large number of components, and the network state undergoes complex changes with the development of component damage. In this paper, a novel method for component damage transfer to structural seismic performance loss is proposed using network shortest paths. First, a directed weighted complex network based on force transfer direction and component stiffness is constructed for reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures. Then, the component damage is calculated by the degradation of its stiffness and is used to update the weight distribution of the damage network. Finally, the structural performance loss is evaluated by the degradation of damage network efficiency. Results show that the proposed method with an updated component weight relationship is able to reflect the true loss of structural performance according to the finite element dynamic elastic‐plastic analysis of RC frame structures. For the structural performance loss degree (none, slight, moderate, severe, complete), the proposed method and the weighted method both exhibit high accuracy (number correctly classified/total number of samples) when structural performance loss is none, severe, or complete loss. The accuracy of the proposed method is significantly higher than that of the weighted method when structural performance loss is slight and moderate loss, with 58.1% and 84.2% improvement, respectively. For structural typical damage modes (global, local, and weak layer damage mode), the proposed method and the weighted method both exhibit high accuracy when structures exhibit global damage mode. The accuracy of the proposed method is significantly higher than that of the weighted method when structures exhibit local and weak layer damage mode. The accuracy of the proposed method is stable at 95.2%, while the accuracy of the weighted method is 76.2% and 70.2%, respectively. Overall, the weighted method exhibits high accuracy when structural performance loss is less than slight loss or greater than moderate loss, while the proposed method exhibits high accuracy throughout the entire process of structural performance loss, especially in moderate loss.