Breaking SEO News: Huge Impressions Drop in Search Console & Tracking Tools Not Working

If you’ve logged into Google Search Console recently and noticed a massive drop in impressions, you’re not alone. A lot of SEOs and affiliate marketers are panicking right now because the graphs look scary, but the truth is, there’s nothing to worry about.

Here’s what’s actually happening.

Google Removes the &num=100 Parameter

Google has quietly rolled out an update that removes the &num=100 parameter from search URLs.

For years, this parameter allowed us (and rank tracking tools) to load up to 100 search results at once. But now, Google is limiting searches to a maximum of 10 results per page.

This may sound small, but it has a massive ripple effect:

• Rank trackers break – Most SEO tools rely on that parameter to check keyword positions. Without it, they can only see the top 10 results.
• Costs increase – If tools want to continue showing rankings up to position 100, they’ll now need to make 10 separate requests instead of one. That means 10x more work and higher costs, which will almost certainly be passed on to customers.
• Impressions disappear in Search Console – This is the big one causing panic.

Why Your Impressions Have Dropped

Search Console impressions measure how many times your content is “seen” in search results. But here’s the catch:

• Before, bots and tools would load 100 results per query (including positions 11–100).
• Now, bots only load 10 results.

So, if your content ranks outside of the top 10, it won’t get picked up in those “impression” counts anymore.

That’s why impressions have dropped, but clicks have stayed the same and average position numbers are shifting around.

In other words:
👉 You didn’t lose rankings.
👉 You didn’t lose traffic.
👉 You just lost bot impressions.

Why Did Google Make This Change?

The most likely reason is that Google wants to stop mass scraping of their results. A big part of this is to curb AI models like ChatGPT that have been using Google SERPs in their outputs.

By limiting the number of results available per request, Google makes scraping far more expensive and less efficient.

What This Means for You

• Don’t panic about Search Console drops – Your real traffic (clicks) hasn’t gone anywhere.
• Expect rank tracking tools to struggle – Until they adapt, many tools will show incorrect data for anything outside the top 10.
• Prepare for higher tool costs – Since scraping SERPs just got 10x more expensive, some SEO tools will raise prices.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a sign that your rankings or traffic have collapsed, it’s simply a technical change in how data is collected.

✅ Bottom line: If your clicks are stable, you’re fine. Impressions may look scary, but it’s just noise caused by Google’s update.