🚨 Google Just Changed Search Console Data (Here’s What You Need to Know)

Happy Tuesday!

If your SEO reports suddenly look “off” this week — don’t worry. It’s not your site. It’s Google.

Yesterday, Google rolled out a significant update to how it tracks impressions in Search Console, and it’s affecting every account.

What Changed

Before: Google counted impressions if your site appeared in the top 100 results for a keyword. That meant your site could get “impressions” even if no one ever scrolled that far (or if bots/tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush were crawling).

Now: Google will only count impressions if your site appears on the first two pages of results.

What You’ll Notice in Reports

Impressions have dropped significantly (because anything beyond page 2 no longer counts).

Average positions will jump (because the reporting pool is smaller).

Historical data comparisons will look skewed.

Why This Matters

The data is now cleaner and more reliable. Impressions reflect real visibility, not inflated numbers.

But it also means we’ll need to reframe how we interpret performance over time since the metrics before and after this change aren’t apples-to-apples.

We’ll talk about this and much more in our upcoming Local SEO Webinar