As of September 10th, a change by Google has made your GSC data no longer accurate. In this video, I explain what has happened and how it affects the data.
Then I asked ChatGPT to create a blog for it based on the video transcript. That info is below and though the writing style it uses is mundane, I have checked for veracity and also added in appropriate links and additional details. And if you prefer to hear my real voice (for some reason), just watch the video below.
I want to walk you through a major analytics shift that’s recently happened inside Google Search Console, and why much of your old Google Search Console impression data might as well be thrown in the trash.
This change started rolling out around September 10th, 2025, and while Google’s been predictably quiet about it, the SEO community has not. From Search Engine Land to Search Engine Roundtable, people are noticing that organic search impressions have fallen off a cliff—and it’s not a bug. It’s Google changing how search works under the hood.
Let’s dig in.
What Is a Search Impression?
Let’s say you search for “shoes” on Google. Every website that shows up in the results gets counted as an impression. That’s true whether you click on them or not. If a site appears in the top 10 results, boom—impression. Same if it’s 85th. Google Search Console used to track all of that.
Now, here’s where it gets technical (but important): historically, SEO tools and bots could simulate a Google search and get up to 100 results per query, using little tricks and parameters that Google allowed, even if they haven’t officially supported them for years.
That capability is now gone.
What Changed?
As of September 10th, Google cut off access to these deeper search results. If a bot or SEO tool tries to grab more than the standard results (usually 10), it’s blocked. That means tools used to monitor rankings and impressions for keywords beyond the first page are effectively neutered.
And if you’re thinking, “Why does that matter if no one clicks on page 9 anyway?” — you’re right… but also missing the point.
Those bots scraping 100 results per query were inflating impression numbers in Search Console. So when Google cut them off, your impression data tanked—not because you’re performing worse in search, but because the bots that were padding your data disappeared.
Clicks Are Still Reliable
Here’s the kicker: even though impressions fell, clicks haven’t. If anything, some sites are seeing more clicks and better average positions. Why?
Because without bots clogging up the impression data, we’re left with the stuff that actually matters—real human searches, real human clicks.
So that client you have who’s panicking because impressions dropped like a rock? Show them their click numbers. If those are stable or growing, it’s not bad news—it’s just cleaner data.
It’s Cody again – This is actually a great example a website that has seen increased clicks, click through rates, and ranking improvements over the last 7 days compared to the previous 7 days but a huge fall off in meaningless (bot driven) impressions after September 10th.
Why Did Google Do This?
While Google hasn’t outright said it, most of us know what this is really about: AI competition.
Tools like ChatGPT (yep, the very tool Cody used to turn the above video’s transcription into this blog) were using similar scraping methods to replicate Google search results in AI chat. Google wasn’t a fan of that. This change kneecaps those efforts and helps protect their shiny new Gemini AI product.
So in classic Google fashion, they quietly pulled the plug on something a huge chunk of the SEO world was using—no apology, no warning, just a quiet, “Oh, that wasn’t a supported feature.”
What This Means for You (and Your Clients)
If you’re tracking SEO for yourself or your clients, here’s the bottom line:
Impression data before September 10th is toast. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison anymore.
Clicks and average position are your new best friends. They’ve always mattered more, and now they’re cleaner.
Reset your expectations. If you use impressions as a KPI, update your dashboards and stop trying to compare old numbers to new ones.
This is the new normal—and in a weird way, it’s not all bad. Less bot noise. More signal.
TL;DR:
Forget impressions before September 10th. Your Google Search Console data just got a reset—and it’s actually more honest now.
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Okay, back to real life Cody –
If you have questions or need help making sense of this shift in your data, let us know. While it sucks to lose this historical data’s accuracy, at least it isn’t a true drop in traffic.
