If you’ve opened Google Search Console recently and noticed a sudden drop in impressions starting around September 11, you’re not alone. Across the web, site owners and SEOs have been reporting similar declines. But before you panic, there’s good news — this drop is mostly due to a reporting change, not an actual loss of search visibility. Let’s break down what happened, why it matters, and how to tell if your website was truly affected.
What Changed in Google Search Console
Around mid-September, Google quietly made a change to how certain search results are served — specifically, the removal of the &num=100 parameter. This parameter allowed users (and SEO tools) to view up to 100 results per page in Google Search.
Many rank trackers, scrapers, and bots used this setting to collect data from the SERPs. The problem? These automated queries were recorded as “impressions” in Google Search Console, even though they weren’t real human searches. When Google disabled that parameter, those artificial impressions disappeared from your data overnight. So while your impression count may have dropped, your actual visibility to real users probably didn’t change much — and in some cases, average position may even look slightly better now
because those low-value, bot-generated impressions are gone. For more on this, see SERoundtable’s coverage of the reporting change and Search Engine Land’s analysis.
Many rank trackers, scrapers, and bots used this setting to collect data from the SERPs. The problem? These automated queries were recorded as “impressions” in Google Search Console, even though they weren’t real human searches. When Google disabled that parameter, those artificial impressions disappeared from your data overnight. So while your impression count may have dropped, your actual visibility to real users probably didn’t change much — and in some cases, average position may even look slightly better now
because those low-value, bot-generated impressions are gone. For more on this, see SERoundtable’s coverage of the reporting change and Search Engine Land’s analysis.
Other Google Updates Around the Same Time
To make things more confusing, Google also rolled out or completed a few updates during this period:
•The August 2025 Spam Update finished rolling out in early September, leading to short- term ranking volatility for some sites.
•Search Quality Rater Guidelines were updated on September 11 to clarify how AI Overviews and YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content are evaluated. While these updates were real, the majority of sudden, steep impression drops align closely with the
reporting adjustment, not with an algorithm penalty or ranking loss.
SEO Reporting Tools Are Also Struggling
The recent change has also caused issues for SEO reporting and rank-tracking software, many of which relied on the same &num=100 parameter to collect keyword ranking data. Since its removal, tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and other tracking platforms have reported discrepancies or partial ranking visibility due to how Google now serves SERP data (Search Engine Land, SERoundtable). In fact, SERoundtable also published a follow-up article explaining how many third-party tools temporarily broke after the update, as they struggled to adjust their scraping and reporting systems. This means that not only are impression numbers in Search Console affected, but some third-party SEO dashboards may also show incomplete or inconsistent ranking data until they adapt to the new system.
How to Tell If the Drop Is Real
You can confirm whether your site’s drop is a reporting artifact by checking a few key metrics:
| What to Check | What to Look For | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Organic traffic in GA4 | Compare Sept 12 onward to previous weeks/months | If traffic is steady, your real visibility hasn't changed |
| Clicks and CTR in GSC | Are clicks stable while impressions dropped? | Reporting change - not an actual loss |
| Keyword rankings | Check in a rank tracker or manually | If rankings hold steady, no SEO issue |
| Top queries and pages | If many long-tail, low-rank queries vanished | Those were likely the artificial impressions |
What You Should Do Next
•Don’t panic. Your site’s performance probably hasn’t tanked — only the way Google reports it has changed.
•Focus on meaningful metrics like clicks, conversions, and traffic, rather than raw impression counts.
•Communicate this to stakeholders if clients or managers are concerned about “falling numbers.”
•Keep monitoring rankings and index coverage for peace of mind.
If your traffic or rankings did fall alongside impressions, then it’s worth conducting a deeper SEO audit — checking for technical issues, thin content, or spam-related ranking adjustments.
The Bottom Line
The September 2025 impression drop isn’t a sign your SEO is failing — it’s a sign Google is cleaning up its data.
Search Console metrics are now a bit more accurate, reflecting real user searches instead of bot- driven impressions. However, some SEO software may continue to struggle to provide accurate ranking data until their systems adjust. So while your graphs may look scary, your website’s true visibility in Google search results likely hasn’t changed much at all.
In short:
👉 Lower impressions ≠ lower performance.
👉 Your SEO isn’t broken — your data just got cleaner.
