Google Removes Key SEO Tracking Feature: What It Means for Your Rankings

In September 2025, Google made a significant change to how digital marketers track keyword rankings. The search engine quietly disabled the ‘&num=100’ parameter, which allowed users to view up to 100 search results per page. This change has disrupted many SEO tools and reporting systems, such as Ahrefs and SEMrush, causing noticeable shifts in data and performance metrics.

What Was the &num=100 Parameter?

The ‘&num=100’ parameter was a URL modifier used by SEO tools and bots to retrieve up to 100 search results in a single query. This feature was vital for several reasons:

• Comprehensive Rank Tracking: It enabled marketers to monitor keyword positions beyond the first page of search results. It provided a good overview of your rankings as well as helped to identify quick wins to work on like positions just outside the top 10.
• Efficient Data Collection: By retrieving more results in one request, SEO tools could gather data faster and more accurately.
• Accurate Impression Counts: By accessing deeper search results, the parameter helped capture a fuller picture of how users interacted with search results beyond the first few listings.

With the removal of this parameter, tools now default to retrieving only 10 results per query, requiring multiple requests to gather the same amount of data.

Immediate Impact on SEO Metrics

Source: Anonymised share of voice data from Ahrefs

The removal of the ‘&num=100’ parameter has already led to several noticeable changes in SEO data:

• Decline in Impressions: Websites have reported a significant drop in impressions within Google Search Console, particularly on desktop platforms.

• Increased Average Position: With fewer impressions recorded for lower-ranking pages, average positions might appear artificially higher than they are in reality.

• Reduced Keyword Visibility: Without the ability to track keyword positions beyond the top 10, visibility for pages ranking lower is harder to measure.

It’s important to note that these changes are primarily in data collection and reporting, not actual SEO performance. While the data may look different, the ranking positions of websites themselves have not fundamentally changed. It’s now just harder to report on progress!

Why Did Google Make This Change?

While Google has not provided an official explanation for the removal of this parameter, several theories have emerged:

• Reducing Bot Activity: The ‘&num=100’ parameter was often used by bots to scrape large amounts of data from Google’s search results. By removing it, Google may be attempting to reduce the strain that large-scale scraping places on its infrastructure.

• Improving Data Accuracy: The removal could lead to more accurate reporting of impressions, better reflecting how users interact with search results and reducing skewed data from non-clicked results.

• Preparing for AI Search: There is speculation that Google is gearing up for an increased focus on AI in search. With AI-generated responses like Google’s AI Overviews becoming more prevalent in search results, Google may not need to display 100 results per page. Instead, fewer results could be shown as AI tools provide more direct answers to user queries. This aligns with Google’s broader strategy to incorporate AI into search, though details are still speculative.

How to Adapt Your SEO Performance Tracking

In light of these changes, digital marketers need to rethink how they measure SEO performance. Here are some updated strategies to help you adapt:

• Focus on Click-Through Rates (CTR): Instead of relying solely on impressions, prioritise metrics like CTR and organic revenue or leads. These metrics offer more actionable insights into how well your content is resonating with users.
• Monitor AI Mentions: With AI Overviews gaining traction in search results, it's essential to track your brand's presence in these responses. Monitor how your content appears in AI-generated summaries, as this increasingly influences visibility. Tools like Ahrefs provide this data, or you can use HubSpot’s AEO Grader to understand your performance, but take this data with a pinch of salt, as these tools are still in their infancy and the data isn’t always 100% accurate.
• Track Top 10 Keywords: Although it’s now more challenging to track keywords beyond the top 10, monitoring your rankings within the top 10 still provides a good indication of performance. These keywords are the ones that bring traffic, so they are very important for performance.
• Review Onsite Engagement: In addition to tracking keyword rankings, it’s important to assess how visitors are engaging with your content. Review metrics like bounce rates, average time on page, and engagement rates to better understand how your content resonates with visitors.
  
  

Source: Anonymised AI citation data from Ahrefs

What About Organic Traffic?

In the past, organic traffic was often a key metric for assessing SEO performance. However, this metric is becoming less reliable due to the growing prominence of AI Overviews in search results. These AI-generated responses provide users with direct answers to their queries, reducing the need for them to click through to a website. As a result, many websites have seen a sharp drop in organic traffic, with reports showing an average decrease of 34% in traffic for sites that once ranked high.

However, this decline in organic traffic doesn’t necessarily indicate a loss of revenue or leads. Users might still engage with brands via other channels, even if they don’t click through directly from the search results. Many of these users may return at a later time to make a purchase or convert through another session. Therefore, it is critical to continue optimising for AI Overviews to ensure your brand maintains visibility and attracts new customers.

Impact on Different Industries

It’s also important to recognise that the impact of these changes may vary across industries. For example, sectors like news and education have seen particularly sharp declines in traffic due to AI Overviews, which often summarise articles directly in search results. Research from SimilarWeb shows that zero-click searches for news-related content have surged, with news publishers experiencing significant drops in traffic as a result.

Other industries, like e-commerce or local businesses, may not see as dramatic an effect. However, the trend toward zero-click searches means that all marketers must adapt to the new search environment by optimising content for both traditional rankings and AI-driven formats.

What If I’m Not Ranking in the Top 10?

For new websites that might not yet rank in the top 10, this update will be a challenge. We used the 11-100 ranking positions to identify quick wins and understand progress in pushing results towards the first page of Google. Now that this data is gone, new websites will have to navigate blind. Same problem for websites trying to rank for new topics, it will be harder to make informed decisions.

We suggest getting back to basics and focusing on your target personas. Identify what they’re searching for and use your business acumen or industry knowledge to prioritise the topics you want to rank for. It might not be as scientific, but should still help you make progress toward the top 10.

Need Help Navigating These Changes?

Understanding and adapting to these shifts can be challenging, especially at a time when marketers have to justify every penny spent within their budget by showing clear success metrics and ROI. Our team of SEO experts understand these challenges and are here to help you demonstrate clear results and progress to your leadership. We will help you define a winning strategy based on current performance to increase your online visibility and drive more revenue.

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