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A major shift has occurred in how Google Search Console reports your website's performance data, and it all stems from a quiet technical change few noticed. Google has removed the "num=100" parameter from search results—a seemingly minor adjustment with far-reaching consequences for SEO professionals and website owners alike.

This parameter allowed SEO tools to view 100 search results on a single page, gathering vast amounts of ranking data efficiently. Its removal has thrown rank tracking companies into disarray, forcing them to make ten times more requests to collect the same data, dramatically increasing their operational costs and processing times. For these specialized tools, the choice now becomes whether to scale up infrastructure, reduce the scope of tracking, or pass costs on to clients.

The most noticeable impact for website owners appears in Google Search Console reports. If you've logged in recently and noticed your impressions dropping while your average position improved, this parameter change explains why. Those deep-page impressions (positions 50-100) were largely generated by bots using the num=100 parameter, not real users. Without these bot impressions, your data now more accurately reflects actual human behavior. Sites with fewer page-one rankings are seeing the most dramatic changes, with impression drops of up to 70-80% in some cases, while sites with strong first-page presence experience less disruption.

This cleaner data ultimately pushes us to focus on what truly matters—getting high rankings in positions where users actually engage. While your actual traffic and real rankings remain unchanged, the visibility into lower-ranking terms that might represent opportunities has diminished. Understanding this shift helps interpret your performance metrics correctly and make better-informed SEO decisions going forward. Want to discover how to identify the most valuable keyword opportunities despite these changes? Try our specialized tools designed to cut through the noise and focus on what drives real traffic.

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"Werq" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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