Impact Of Google Blocking Bots On Search Console Data

"Tyler Gargula posted on LinkedIn that he looked at just about 320 profiles in Google Search Console and said 87.7% of those properties / sites experienced drops in impressions and 77.6% of sites experienced drops in the number of unique ranking keywords. Some are saying that those sites impacted by the great decoupling are more likely to see an impact with this. But I am not sure if there is any data to back that up, at least not yet."

"That being said, Serge Bezborodov posted on X that he looked at 1,000 sites / properties in Google Search Console and "observed a ~25% drop in impressions over the past week." Here is that chart: Here are the charts from Tyler Gargula's data on more of what was impacted: (1) Impression Drops: 87.7% of sites experienced drops in impressions. The effects of disabling num=100 appear to impact most sites in some way (level of impact is crucial and will vary of course)."

"(2) Query Count: 77.6% of sites experienced drops in the number of unique ranking keywords. Less visibility can result in less opportunity to receive an impression for a new, unique keyword. (3) Keyword Length: Short-tail and mid-tail keywords experienced the largest drops in impressions, with single word keywords being much lower than I anticipated. This could be because short and mid-tail keywords are popular across the SEO industry and easier to track/manage within popular SEO tracking tools."

Google removed the num parameter used to return more results per page, disrupting many third-party scrapers and causing notable declines in Search Console impressions. Google confirmed the num parameter is not officially supported. Analysis of roughly 320 Search Console properties found 87.7% experienced impression drops and 77.6% saw fewer unique ranking keywords. Broader analysis of about 1,000 properties observed approximately a 25% impressions drop over a week. Short- and mid-tail keywords showed the largest impression declines. Reported ranking distributions shifted with fewer page-3+ listings and more keywords appearing in the top 3 and page 1, suggesting reported positions may now align more closely with actual rankings.

Read at Search Engine Roundtable