Matthew Widdop
Matty is a Digital SEO Executive at Intelligency, helping our clients to improve their digital performance. Matty is currently studying for his Level 3 Multi-Channel Marketer apprenticeship and has completed a Sport Journalism Degree at the University of Huddersfield.
SEO Platforms that allow users to track keyword rankings on Google have been experiencing issues not being able to track keywords outside of the top 10 results, while Google Search Console has also been experiencing issues with impressions.
What’s causing Rank Tracking issues?
The URL Parameter &num=100allows platforms such as SemRUSH and SERanking to scrape 100 results at a time. Google has recently removed the parameter, which now means rank tracking sites have to scrape the SERP at 10x the cost, leading to issues with the data being displayed to end users.
SemRush has released a statement about the latest changes: “In what has already been a dynamic year for search, this change is rippling through the SEO industry. Rank tracking tools, including Semrush, traditionally rely on this parameter to efficiently capture organic results at scale. Without it, getting the full top 100 results now requires 10 times as many requests, making the process significantly more resource-intensive.”
SemRush suggested that users should focus their efforts on the Top 20 Results for the time being, as rankings outside of this may not regain visibility in the future if Google doesn’t reintroduce the &num=100 parameter.
How has this impacted Google Search Console
Search Console impressions are down dramatically despite the fact that clicks are still at the same level for a lot of users. Brodie Clark, an independent SEO analyst, has speculated that Search Console data is down because these scrapers that have been using the &num=100 parameter have been unnaturally inflating users’ impressions for years, as they load articles more frequently while scraping the SERP. This would explain why clicks have stayed steady while impressions have fallen. As Brodie Clark states, “For a normal search result for a typical Google user, the default ‘current page’ would be 10 organic listings. Because rank trackers tend to use 100 organic listings as the default view, a result that ranks in position #99 would then incur an impression within GSC, even though it is a bot impression.”
What does it mean for marketers?
As it currently stands, marketers will have to deal with inconsistencies in rank tracking data for the foreseeable future, and immediate data will still be available on most rank tracking platforms for the top 10 and 20 rankings. We don’t currently know if this is a permanent change from Google, forever affecting rank tracking data, or if this is just temporary.
