Answer
Sep 19, 2025 - 10:12 AM
You may have seen a huge drop in impressions lately on Google Search Console, that looks like this:
What you'll also notice....is if you enable the ability to see your average position....you may see a jump like this:
This is likely not a coincidence that this is around the same time that Google stopped supporting a parameter in their search URLs which allowed people (but most imporantly SEO tools) to put this parameter in their search results URLs:
&num=100
and what that would do is allow SEO ranking tools to pull the top 100 results....digest them as one result...and use them to drive their SEO ranking tools.
So how does could this relate to your drop in impressions?
Well.....if these rankers all of the sudden are unable to pull those pages of 100 results.....then your content would "lose that traffic" (note, that the traffic is from crawlers)....and you'll see that drop in impressions. Once the impressions are gone, then the math Google uses to judge your positions may have changed too.....and therefore you see a huge spike in "Position" that is recognized as well. The issue is, looks like around 50% of impressions may have actually been bogus.....we'll dig into this here.
What is the main take-away here?
It means that the things you felt great about before or assurance in...in growing impressions (and what you've been sold as " on the road to success")...all the sudden may have been revealed NOT BE REAL PEOPLE and be the actual SEO tools themselves. As Brodie Clark reported, he said this:
"....impressions data can be heavily inflated by rank trackers. To such an extent that I've seen situations where impressions declined by a whopping 47%"
This is a HUGE deal, because in a content space where impressions and clicks were the main measure of ROI for "Content for SEO".....it's further revealing what services may be worth paying for and which ones aren't. But, before you even start digesting the fact that the "ROI Reports" that you've been reading and used to reassure you....one of the main KPIs for "look, it's working" are actually driven quite notably by the very tools that same service is using to report success (really, don't think too hard about that, read the below first because that's quite infuriating).....let's dig into what you should do moving forward with content.
What do you do moving forward?
Well.....like it's always been "Content is King" but it's not the content that's gotten crushed with these latest Google Updates (by latest, we mean the last 3 years).....not only in impressions but these traditional content creation practices are also getting crushed with the clicks. Bottom line....you need to stop gaming Google, and publish actual valuable content based on your actual experience. At Answerbase, the Q&A we power is based on real customer requests for information...and enable you to be "first to market" with that information that real people are searching for on Google, AI...or wherever content is surfaced to fulfill informational searches. Now, with Answerbase....we're able to recognize the conversion attribution (real revenue) and value of the content very early on....and then you match that with search volume...and THAT is the stuff that is worth you doing a deeper dive on. If you're a business and creating content that is actually valuable for your audience....a high percentage of that SHOULD convert, and you should be able to see that. We see on average 21% of Q&A's have conversion attribution but we've seen this very high. See this example below where 61% of their Q&A pairs have conversion attribution.
You'll be sold "SEO Services" all day long.....but when you ask about the content they create and ask them to show you ACTUAL conversions driven by that content....99% of these services are silent and they talk about "clicks and impressions". If you're paying money for a service, that should have some kind of measurable ROI....and Answerbase can provide it. While the game of "do keyword research and then create competitive content" has gotten crushed over the last few years like this:
and this....
These traditional SEO practices are getting crushed....all while we see this with Answerbase-driven Q&A:
and like this (these are all related to Google Core Updates):
This is happening, it will continue to happen....and you don't need to be worried about Google Updates or parameter support or the accuracy of your ranking trackers if you're doing things right. You'll see measurable ROI from content creation, and then that content will drive you traffic as you service the planet with that information. We encourage you to schedule a demo and we'll help you understand what is going on, why, and why it's going to continue in the "Post AI" and "Post Helpful Content Updates" world.
