John Mueller from Google somewhat/kinda made a comment, finally, on the impression decreasing with the average position increasing within the Search Console reports. This came after Google dropped the 100 results per page function, resulting in the third-party tools totally becoming a mess.
Update: At 5:30 pm, Google responded with a statement, which I added below.
As a reminder, many, not all, but many, are seeing a noticeable decline in desktop impressions, resulting in a sharp increase in average position. Many speculate this is being we are no longer seeing scraper tools inject fake impressions and keywords into Google Search Console by faking searchers.
But we don't know for sure, since Google has not commented - despite me reaching out numerous times to Google's comms team and to our Google friends on social.
John Mueller from Google kind of commented on Bluesky this morning, he said:
Maybe the real impressions were the friends we made along the way.
I may be taking his comment wrong, but the original post was from Preeti Gupta who wrote:
I had a good run, folks. Gotta pack my bags and move to the mountains lol
Here is that post:
I had a good run, folks. Gotta pack my bags and move to the mountains lol
— Preeti Gupta (@ilovechoclates.bsky.social) September 18, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Here is John's reply:
Maybe the real impressions were the friends we made along the way.
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) September 18, 2025 at 4:34 AM
I guess those were not "real impressions"?
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
Update: At 5:30 pm ET, I finally got a statement from a Google spokesperson. Google told me:
The use of this URL parameter is not something that we formally support.
