Did Your Website’s Google Impressions Just Crash?
Around September 11–14, 2025, Google made a measurement/reporting change that caused reported impressions in Google Search Console (GSC) to tank. Don’t worry, it’s not a ranking crash! In fact, your average position in GSC probably went up. This is simply a change in how/what data Google is reporting.
What changed with GSC reporting in early September 2025?
Google disabled the “&num=100” search parameter.
This behind-the-scenes change caused a dramatic drop in reported impressions and a sharp jump (improvement) in average keyword position in Google Search Console. However, it did not signal an actual broad ranking or penalty change for most sites.
What’s the &num=100 parameter?
For years, the &num=100 URL parameter has been used by automated SEO tools (and bots) to show up to 100 results on a single search results page.
How does disabling the &num=100 parameter affect GSC results?
By disabling this parameter, only the top 10–20 results are retrieved per page. This makes it much harder for automated tools to access results in positions 11 to 100 at scale.
One effect of this change is that third-party SEO tools, such as the ones we use here at Tree Care Marketing Solutions, are no longer able to report (or easily report) on long-tail keywords that may be a good candidate for organic SEO but fall outside the top 10 keywords. If they’re able to find a way to continue this more detailed reporting, I expect that the price of those tools will go up to cover the additional development costs.
Why does this affect impression counts?
The impression count you see in GSC shows the number of times a URL appears in the top 100 results.
Because bots using &num=100 made many of these “impressions,” the count was artificially high. Most people never scroll past the first 10 to 20 listings in the search results, so only bots and web scrapers were “seeing” the rest of the URLs.
With &num=100 disabled, bot and tool-driven impressions for keywords ranking in Google Search Console dropped out of GSC reporting overnight, causing a sudden decline in total impressions.
How does that impact average position?
Average rank position will generally be higher (closer to #1) when only the top 10 results are used.
With Google Search Console only counting impressions for higher-ranking keywords – typically those seen by real users – the average rank is calculated from a smaller set of better-performing keywords, mathematically improving the position metrics.
The reality is that the “real” position of your keywords hasn’t changed, but what you’re seeing now is likely closer to the actual rank. The previous numbers were improperly brought down by including bot impressions.
What are we seeing after the change in GSC reporting?
After the change, there are far fewer bot-induced impressions being tracked. As a result, most sites are now reporting:
- lower impression numbers,
- improved average positions (mathematically, because fewer low-ranked keywords are counted),
- increased click-through-rate (CTR), and
- click counts that are about the same as previously.
These changes in impressions and position will be more pronounced for sites with fewer impressions overall and lower average position.
But don’t panic. These changes mostly represent a reporting anomaly, not a real-world performance crash or penalty affecting live rankings or organic clicks.
This is Not an Algorithm Ranking Penalty
There were core algorithm shifts in September 2025, focused on content depth and user intent. However, the GSC upheaval on or around September 11th is almost entirely due to the removal of the &num=100 parameter and resulting reporting changes, rather than a broad algorithmic penalty or devaluation.
Actual human search visibility and organic clicks for most sites has stayed roughly flat.
What To Do
- Manually spot-check rankings, focusing on actual traffic and conversions to make sure they’re not affected.
- Do not focus solely on the top 10 positions – there’s a lot of value to be found farther down the list of keywords.
- Wait for third-party tools to adapt their methodology.
Summary
The drastic changes in GSC keyword positions and impressions in early September 2025 resulted from Google removing the &num=100 parameter, which mostly impacted data reporting and the way third-party SEO tools and GSC itself track impressions for rankings outside the top 10. Rankings for real users were largely unaffected. Evaluate your website traffic against clicks, not impressions, to check for any anomalies.
