Google seems to be successfully blocking enough of the attempts of scrapers from trying to scrape data from its search results page over the past few weeks than it has in a long time. We reported this a few weeks ago, and I am surprised to see that many tools still struggle with Google Search reporting.
Back in July, Google started to test using goto redirects in the search results to better identify and block scrapers. I assume this was not directly aimed at Google tracking tools that SEOs use but rather the AI bots scraping its search results and Google's duel with SerpApi. Google has also recently been testing numerous ways to verify humans and higher rates than before - which is likely how Google is giving these scrapers a hard time. Let's not forget the num 100 change from 2025.
That being said, I spoke with Derek Perkins from Nozzle again about the issue. He has been the most transparent about the issues with me and he told me that there is a three-pronged approach that Google is taking including:
(1) Super wide IP blocking, which targets major residential proxy networks
(2) A significant increase in the use of captchas
(3) Google is injecting bad data into suspect SERPs so that when the tools do scrape the results, they get the wrong data in some cases.
Early this morning, he published an amazing deep dive on what he is seeing - he wrote Poisoned Google SERPs - "Since September 2026, Google has been poisoning the SERPs it serves rank trackers: complete, normal-looking pages whose results have been swapped out. Nothing on the page gives it away. Each keyword’s own history does." Here is what he found:
- 8.0% of SERPs came back poisoned
- Blocked first, then poisoned
- The page looks normal. The results don’t.
- Social sites and forums fill the gap
- Tracked sites fall out of the top 10
- It passes within days
The first time I reported on this, I did not hear back from most of the tools I reached out to by the time I published. Several others later posted notices on their websites, blogs or in the tools to tell customers about issues. Some of those were related to the goto redirects, when the truth is, the goto redirects are the easy part for the tools to handle. Sistrix commented on this, Data for SEO also posted something on its status page, SE Ranking posted this morning that for Google rankings it is "missing positions for some keywords" but most of the issue has been resolved, Advanced Web Rankings posted about the issues, as did Morningscore and some others. But many did not get back to me or confused the goto redirects with the new issues occurring.
The third approach, injecting bad data, concerns me the most. I suspect most tools won't pick up on this issue too quickly and thus think all is good when Google may be just toying with them.
Again, I don't think Google is taking these efforts to block the tools SEOs use but rather to go after AI bots and SerpApi.
That being said, Google does offer a whole portal of information about rankings and more in Search Console. It might not be enough for what most SEOs need but Google does give us a lot of data there. Well, not click or query data for generative AI search, like AI Overviews and AI Mode...
There are tons of complaints about the tools not providing reliable data, as the issue become more visible, here is just a sampling of those complaints or posts:
Trying to share some findings on this but rank trackers are too unreliable at the moment 😩😩😩
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) October 8, 2026
Regarding the visibility tools having a tough time accurately tracking sites right now, here's another good example. This site got hammered on 9/29 during the spam update. 100% confirmed by the site owner to me... ahrefs accurately picked up the drop, Semrush way late picking it up (but eventually did), and then Sistrix still doesn't show the drop. Welcome to SEO visibility tracking in (late) 2026. Will be interesting to see how this goes over time. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 7, 2026
@RyanJones We talked about that on the show today there's more and more things that are getting blocked like RSS feeds from Reddit are going away because they don't want the ice scraping them
— Kristine (@schachin on Tw*tter(NOW)) 🇺🇦 (@schachin) October 2, 2026
Google is blocking scrapers in new ways again... But here's the interesting part. I know 100% that certain sites dropped and some recovered with the 9/4 unconfirmed update. When checking one that dropped by nearly 100%, and then fully recovered, here is what the big 3 tools show.
ahrefs picks up the recovery. Sistrix does NOT pick up the recovery. Semrush shows recovery, but it lagged a bit. So I think ahrefs is able to still scrape ok, Semrush is still scraping ok, but slower, and Sistrix is way behind. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 18, 2026
I have documented and handed off MozCast as best as I'm able, so I hope it will continue. Google certainly doesn't make it easy to maintain.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr-pete.bsky.social) October 9, 2026 at 4:32 PM
@rustybrick SEO data analytics life is like this nowadays! https://t.co/aBDBhwjs9h
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Trackers are off for sure .
— Robert O'Haver 🇺🇦 (@RobertOHaver) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick They don’t work at all atm
— BowTiedWookie (@BowTiedWookie) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Tracking tools have been noisy for months on our end too. Spot-checking a few queries in an incognito window has been the only way I trust a movement right now.
— Alex Wolk (@alexwolk1) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick They are able to detect bot traffic and instead of blocking them, they are poisoning the results with junk webpages
— Antony Deroshan (@antonyderoshan) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Nothing matches the SERPs.
— Marty Eigner (@martyeigner3) October 10, 2026
@rustybrick Looks like trackers are paying for Google making SERP scraping expensive: num=100 gone, JS required. Most now sample instead of counting, so some daily swings are measurement noise. GSC trend first.
— Daniel Skov Jacobsen (@DSJACOBSEN) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick At the end of Sept/early Oct., they were definitely broken. Some stuff seems to be coming back ok (in SE Ranking and Ahrefs), and I never really saw issues with Semrush. Luckily, SE Ranking allows for manual refreshes, which seems to help.
— Sarah (she/her) (@SarahBlocksidge) October 9, 2026
How are you all coping with the tools not being able to report 100% properly over the past several weeks?
Forum discussion at X.
