As a reminder, Google dropped its unofficial support of showing 100 search results per page, which caused issues for third party tracking tools and even Search Console itself. The theory with Search Console is that the scrapers were injecting artificial data into Google and thus the reporting. But is the same happening with Google Ads reporting?
Vanessa Fox asked on Bluesky "If GSC impressions were inflated, was this also inflating Google Ads keyword tool search volumes?" Good question, so I asked the PPC community and it seems overall, the answer is no? At least for most.
Here are the responses:
Not seeing this in PPC accounts. Here is a chart of multiple accounts merged: pic.twitter.com/pTJXv4PUHr
— Joe (@theJoeShmow) September 22, 2025
i would think this would impact the keyword planner before anything else and only as the unintended consequences of removing n=100 is felt.
— Drew Cannon (@Dcdigitalpro) September 22, 2025
I have already canceled 2 SEMrush accounts for clients who have asked me.
Let’s say it was 20, that would be 20+ less searches a month…
possibly for this brand - saw around an 8% decrease week over week in available impressions (Impr / Impr. Share) which is well over what we'd normally expect even with seasonality. + CTR improved which could indicate a higher % of human vs bot searches. pic.twitter.com/oCNsBEK9IO
— Greg (@PPCGreg) September 25, 2025
Impressions for our accounts are following normal patterns, no changes observed here #ppcchat
— Melissa L Mackey (@beyondthepaid) September 25, 2025
We have not see that yet, nor would I expect it because Google ads can still profit off that data for impression based campaigns, like impression share campaigns
— Zack Bowlby (@ROIAmplifiedCEO) September 25, 2025
Same here...less traffic low quality leads
— Natasha Kaurra | Paid Ads + CRO + PPC Whitelabel (@semexpertnav) September 28, 2025
I did try to ask Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, but did not hear back yet:
maybe cc @adsliaison.bsky.social - any comment on this?
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick.com) September 22, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Makes you wonder if Google Ads has better techniques to weed out this stuff than Search Console?
Forum discussion at Bluesky and threads above.
