As you know, Google dropped the num parameter to see more search results on a page, then the third-party tools scraping became severely impacted and many saw impression declines in Search Console. Google later confirmed the num parameter is not officially supported. So what was the real impact on Search Console data?
Tyler Gargula posted on LinkedIn that he looked at just about 320 profiles in Google Search Console and said 87.7% of those properties / sites experienced drops in impressions and 77.6% of sites experienced drops in the number of unique ranking keywords.
Some are saying that those sites impacted by the great decoupling are more likely to see an impact with this. But I am not sure if there is any data to back that up, at least not yet.
That being said, Serge Bezborodov posted on X that he looked at 1,000 sites / properties in Google Search Console and "observed a ~25% drop in impressions over the past week."
Here is that chart:
Here are the charts from Tyler Gargula's data on more of what was impacted:
(1) Impression Drops: 87.7% of sites experienced drops in impressions. The effects of disabling num=100 appear to impact most sites in some way (level of impact is crucial and will vary of course).
(2) Query Count: 77.6% of sites experienced drops in the number of unique ranking keywords. Less visibility can result in less opportunity to receive an impression for a new, unique keyword.
(3) Keyword Length: Short-tail and mid-tail keywords experienced the largest drops in impressions, with single word keywords being much lower than I anticipated. This could be because short and mid-tail keywords are popular across the SEO industry and easier to track/manage within popular SEO tracking tools.
(4) Keyword Ranking Positions: There has been reductions in keywords ranking on page 3+, and in turn an increase in keywords ranking in the top 3 and page 1. This suggests keywords are now more representative of their actual ranking position, versus receiving skewed positions from num=100.
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.
What are you all seeing?
