The Great September 2025 “Crash”: What Really Happened to Organic Impressions
Key Takeaways
The September 2025 drop in organic impressions was caused by Google changing how it counts impressions, not by a penalty or ranking loss.
Automated and low-value impressions from bots and deep results were removed, making the data look lower but cleaner.
Clicks, traffic, and conversions largely remained stable, showing that real visibility didn’t collapse.
Treat September 2025 as a new baseline for tracking, as impressions before and after this date aren’t directly comparable.
If you logged into Google Search Console lately and saw your impressions line drop off a cliff in September, you’re not alone.
Many site owners, marketers, and business leaders have been panicking: “Did Google penalise me? Did I lose rankings overnight?”
The good news is: most of what you’re seeing is a reporting change, not a collapse in your actual search visibility.
Google often makes behind-the-scenes adjustments to how search works, usually aimed at improving user experience. While the company hasn’t commented directly on this particular change, it’s part of the constant evolution of search - which means the best approach is to observe, adjust, and move forward with this as your new baseline.
In this article I’ll walk you through:
What changed (and when)
Why impressions dropped so sharply
What stayed stable (or even improved)
What you should focus on now
What this means for your business
1. What Changed (And When)
The &num=100 Parameter Gets Retired
For years, SEO tools, scrapers, and analysts have had a shortcut that told Google: “Show me 100 results on one page instead of the usual 10.” Showing 10- pages at once made it easier to load load large sets of results for keyword tracking, competitor research, and SERP mining.
That shortcut was a parameter called &num=100 (or ?num=100) that was added to the end of a search URL to display lengthy search results.
But, between 12–14 September 2025, Google quietly stopped honouring it. Now, even if you try to add it, Google only shows two pages of results (20 listings) or ignores it completely.
This subtle technical change is at the heart of the sudden drop in organic impressions you’re seeing in Search Console.
2. Why Impressions Fell So Sharply (But You’re Not Dead in Search)
Once Google started ignoring &num=100, a lot of “impressions” in Search Console simply vanished overnight:
The drop in organic impressions can be seen across nearly all sites, with the ‘double helix’ effect appearing in Search Console data from mid-September 2025.
Here’s why:
Bot / Scraping Traffic Inflated Past Impressions
Many SEO tools, scrapers, and AI systems used &num=100 to aggressively load pages beyond the first page. Even if a page ranked #50 or #90, that parameter could fetch it as part of the 100 results on one page load. Those loads (often automated) often counted as impressions in Search Console - even though no human saw or scrolled to them.
When that “deep-page, low visibility” load traffic stopped being counted, many sites saw a huge drop in organic impressions.
In one analysis, 87.7% of sites saw overall impression declines after the change. Another report found 77.6% of sites lost unique ranking queries (i.e. the number of distinct keywords they appeared for declined).
So in many cases, the drop in organic impressions is not because your site lost relevance - it’s because large swathes of “non-human” signal were removed from reporting.
Average Position Appears Better
The changes to impressions don’t just affect one number in Search Console - they flow through to how “average position” is shown at different levels. Here’s how it plays out:
Overall Website Average
When you look at your site as a whole, average position is calculated across all impressions, across all keywords.
Before September: this included loads of deep results (positions 50–100+) that were never realistically seen. Those dragged your site’s overall average position down.
After September: with those results stripped out, the sitewide average looks much stronger - even though none of your actual rankings on page one changed.
What this means: the overall “site average” number is cleaner, but it can look like a sudden jump up in rankings when it’s really just a reporting reset.
Page Average
Each page shows up for many keywords.
Before September: a single page might have been shown for 50+ different keywords, because Search Console was counting every low-level impression buried deep in the results. Many of those impressions came from irrelevant or low-visibility queries.
After September: that same page might now show up for only 30 keywords, because the weakest impressions have disappeared. The average position improves, because only the higher-value positions remain in the calculation.
What this means: pages appear to have “fewer ranking keywords” but look stronger in average position. In reality, you haven’t lost meaningful visibility - just noise.
Keyphrase Average
Even a single keyword has its position averaged across every impression it generates.
Before September: a keyword might have shown your site at position 6 on desktop, but also at position 70 on mobile or for long-tail variations. Those deep impressions got included, pulling the average down.
After September: with those very low impressions stripped away, the average position for that keyword looks much better (e.g. moving from 25 → 8) - even though your best positions haven’t changed.
What this means: impressions per keyword drop, while average position for that keyword improves. You haven’t suddenly jumped up - the weaker data just isn’t being counted anymore.
Clicks & Real Traffic Largely Unscathed (In Many Cases)
In most cases, clicks, user sessions, conversions and other real user metrics have held steady or only shifted modestly. That’s a key clue: your audience and actual traffic haven’t “disappeared.”
Thus, what you’re seeing is a recalibration of how Google counts impressions, not necessarily how your content performs in user reality.
3. What Stayed Stable (Or Even Improved) - The Signals You Can Trust
To reassure yourself, here are the metrics and signals you should watch - the ones less likely to be distorted by this drop in organic impressions:
| Signal / Metric | Why It’s More Reliable | What to Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks (Organic) | Reflect actual user behaviour | If clicks hold steady while impressions drop massively, the change is in reporting |
| CTR (Click-Through Rate) | With “false” impressions removed, CTR often improves | If CTR climbs, that’s expected; if CTR collapses, there might be a content/intent mismatch |
| Conversions / Leads / Sales | Tied to real business outcomes | Focus on business impact, not vanity numbers |
| Position shifts (Top 1–3 / 4–10) | Moves within top ranks correspond to visible gains | Monitor terms near the cusp of page 2 → page 1 |
| SERP features / snippets | If your content gets pulled into answer boxes, the count may remain or even grow | Keeps you visible even if “standard impressions” drop |
| Trends over time | Especially when adjusted for the baseline reset | Use annotated charts to highlight “pre-change vs post-change” |
If in your own data you see negligible shifts in these signals (or even improvements), you can confidently argue that your site did not suffer a major visibility collapse - only a drop in organic impressions from reporting changes.
4. What You Should Focus On Now (What You Can Do)
1. Re-benchmark from September 2025
Treat the change date (around 12–14 September) as a “break point” in your reports. Metrics before and after are not apples-to-apples. Chart your impressions, average position, CTR, clicks etc with an annotation or divider at mid-September. This helps contextualise the drop in organic impressions for anyone reviewing.
2. Shift KPI emphasis
Scale back the weight you place on total impressions (which are now less reliable).
For larger businesses with more traffic data to work with, it may make sense to lean more on clicks, conversions, and page-one rankings, as those figures will give you a truer sense of real user impact.
For smaller, local businesses, impressions are still a useful visibility measure - the key is simply to reset expectations, knowing the numbers are now lower but cleaner than before.
Either way, don’t rely on any single metric in isolation. Use impressions alongside other signals to build a more balanced picture.
3. Audit your keyword / content strategy for “near misses”
Where you were appearing at positions 11–20 (page 2), those terms often lose impressions under the new scheme. These are exactly the ones you should prioritise for optimisation. Hunting lifts from page 2 → page 1 remains among the highest-leverage work you can do.
4. Reset your own expectations
It’s important to remember that the drop in organic impressions is not a sign of failure. What’s changed is how Google records the data. Going forward, the numbers you see will be smaller, but they’ll also be more accurate. This means you’ll have a clearer picture of your true visibility online.
5. Keep an eye on SEO tool updates
The change hasn’t just affected Search Console - it’s also created challenges for third-party SEO tools. Many of them used that same shortcut to track rankings beyond page one, and now they’ve had to adjust how they collect data.
What this means for you: if you use SEO reports or dashboards from different providers, you may see slight differences in how rankings or impressions are shown over the next few months. That doesn’t mean your performance has suddenly changed - it just means the tools are catching up to Google’s update.
5. What This Means for Your Business
The sudden drop in organic impressions is best viewed as a reset, not a setback. For your business, that means:
Reports will look different. Expect lower impression numbers going forward. Use September 2025 as the new baseline for tracking progress.
Don’t measure success on impressions alone. For small and local businesses, impressions are still useful for showing visibility - but they’re now a leaner, more realistic number.
Look for stability, not panic. If your enquiries, phone calls, or clicks haven’t changed, then customers are still finding you.
Progress is still possible. Even from a smaller baseline, steady growth in impressions (and more importantly, the right impressions) signals stronger visibility in the searches that matter.
Confidence in the data. What you see in reports now is closer to how people really experience your business in search.
In short: the drop in organic impressions doesn’t mean something’s gone wrong. It means you’re now looking at cleaner, more meaningful numbers - and the right next step is to track your growth from this new starting point.
Final Thoughts
The dramatic drop in organic impressions in September 2025 is very likely a reporting reset, not a pervasive SEO collapse.
Automated impressions from bots and scrapers have been stripped out of Search Console metrics, leaving cleaner but lower numbers.
Your real performance (clicks, conversions, ranking movements in top positions) is a more reliable guidepost going forward. Reset your benchmarks, refocus on steady growth from this new baseline, and remember that the numbers you’re now seeing are a truer reflection of how people actually find your business.
Need Clarity on Your SEO?
The September drop in organic impressions is just one of many shifts in Google’s landscape. For businesses, it highlights how quickly search reporting can change and why focusing on the right metrics is essential. Visibility hasn’t disappeared - it’s being measured differently - and understanding that difference is the first step to making smarter decisions about growth.
Stay ahead of Google’s algorithm shifts - view solutions below or get in touch today to boost your visibility in search.
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Google retired a feature called &num=100 that let tools and bots load hundreds of results at once. When that stopped being counted, impressions looked lower overnight - even though real visibility didn’t disappear.
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No. Rankings and visibility didn’t collapse. The change was in how impressions are reported. Most businesses saw clicks, enquiries, and traffic remain steady.
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Use September 2025 as your new baseline. Keep tracking impressions, but also pay attention to clicks, enquiries, and conversions - the signals that reflect real customers.
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Yes. For small and local businesses, impressions are still a useful way to measure visibility, even though the numbers are smaller now. For larger businesses with more traffic, clicks and conversions often provide a clearer picture.