The great decoupling 2.0?
Google seemingly disabling the &num=100 parameter has had some interesting implications.
Looking at our own data, we saw an overnight drop in impressions of 35,431 on desktop from 10 September. It’s not as big as others, but it’s still fairly significant. At our lowest, we’d dropped by 149,673 impressions by Saturday the 13th (considering it was also the weekend).
There are two key takeaways from this change.
1. The impact it has on rank tracking tools
The shift means that rather than one request for every 100 results, it will take 10. Effectively, it is 10x the cost for SEO tools to track this deep into the SERP.
On the surface, the impact here is minimal for tracking your progress. Everyone knows not many users make it past page one, and being in the top 3 is the most desirable position.
Then, anything in positions 4-10 is a quick win, and everything on page 2 can make it to page one and eventually the highest positions.
However, from a keyword research perspective, I’ve seen some perspectives that say it is impactful here, which I definitely agree with. Finding gaps may become harder. Evaluating your competitors’ domain or potential new opportunities becomes more limiting if digging deeper into the SERP becomes more difficult.
2. Google Search Console data
Removing the &num=100 parameter has caused impressions to drop severely, and without these results, the average position is improving.
The biggest argument I’ve seen here is that the change might mean that the original “great decoupling” (where impressions rose and clicks dropped) was not as much due to a shift in user behaviour as SEOs wanted to believe. Instead, there has just been an increase in scraping tools.
If this is the case, the positive outcome is that GSC data will arguably be more accurate. The data from the 10th will provide a figure that accounts for less bot traffic that isn’t a ‘true’ impression.
Many say the timing is intentional, as LLM competitors like ChatGPT were recently found to be scraping Google’s results.
What do you think about this change? It will be interesting to see if Google comments and what they say. 🍿
