Did your rankings suddenly vanish from your SEO tool, and are your impressions in Google Search Console dropping sharply? That's because of a technical change Google made in mid-September 2025: the &num=100 parameter no longer works. Without it, tools can no longer pull your top 100 positions in one go, and you see that in your SEO data, including in Search Console. Your website performs just as well as before; it only looks like you've lost positions.
What exactly happened?
For years, SEO tools added the parameter "&num=100" to the URL of a Google search. Google then showed 100 results on one page instead of 10, so a tool could pull in all positions from 1 to 100 with a single request. The tools built their complete ranking overviews on that.
Before: one request gave reliable data for positions 1 to 100.
Now: many tools only measure the top 10 or top 20, and deeper positions are often unreliable.
Some tools still occasionally show a deeper position, such as position 50. Those numbers are just much less reliable and differ from one measurement to the next.
Why did Google do this?
Google hasn't given an official explanation. According to Search Engine Roundtable, experts point to protection against AI scrapers and other bots, and to lower costs for Google. What probably plays the biggest part is that more and more AI tools read Google's search results on a large scale.
What you now see in SEO tools and Search Console
Several tools responded to the change. Semrush confirmed that this is an issue affecting the whole industry and all ranking tools, and now only measures the top 10 with full accuracy. AccuRanker by default now only tracks the top 20, and SE Ranking is also struggling with the limit to the top 20.
The change also had a side effect few people had foreseen: from September 10, many website owners saw their impressions in Google Search Console drop sharply. I see those striking "shark bite charts" in almost every account I look at. Impressions that were stable for months fall away all at once, and the average position suddenly looks a lot better.
How does that work? Search Console still counts all impressions from real searchers. What dropped out are the impressions that SEO tools caused themselves: when a tool requested positions 11 to 100 with &num=100, that counted as an impression. Those bot impressions counted for years, and that made your numbers higher than what real people saw.
What does this mean for you as a website owner?
Your website isn't performing worse and you haven't lost rankings. Search Console now shows impressions without the bot traffic that inflated the numbers for years.
Recognize this?
- Suddenly "vanished" rankings in SEO tools for positions 20+
- Sharply dropping impressions in Google Search Console since September 10
- Rankings that tools say have "dropped out" but that you can still find manually
All three come from the same technical change. Anyone who really searches for you finds your website just as well as before. Your Search Console data is now even more reliable, because the bot traffic is gone, or at least counts for a lot less.
Less data for SEO specialists
For website owners, little changes. For SEO specialists it does: they now have far less data to build strategies on, and have to find other ways to track how a site is doing. With local SEO that fortunately matters less, because locally it's mostly about the positions in the top 10.
The work itself doesn't change. You still get found through quality content and technical optimization, on a site that works well for your visitors. So don't let the lower impressions throw you, and look at your clicks instead: they come from real searchers, and they're the best measure of how your site is doing.
Questions about your own SEO data?
Not sure whether the drop in your numbers comes from this change or from something else? Schedule a no-obligation call, and I'll go over it with you.
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