Most of the third-party Google Search tracking tools are broken and not tracking properly. This seemed to start when Google turned off the ability to show 100 search results per page. So just keep in mind, when you are looking at your reporting with these tools, the data may be off since around September 11th or so.
I did note this in my story on Friday but it is important to note again, third party tracking tools may not be working right.
This is in addition to the Search Console data being wonky as well.
All while, we are still having the ongoing Google August 2025 spam update. It makes it really hard to track and the update should be completed any time now.
I did post this yesterday:
Careful with the Google rank tracking tools - seems like many may be having difficulty related to this change https://t.co/Rw7baTLeoK
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) September 14, 2025
Ryan thinks this is Google fighting back?
The AI tools scraping Google are going to be the end of all SEO rank checkers and SERP scrapers - as they're going so crazy Google has no choice but to fight back.
— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) September 14, 2025
Tim from Ahrefs spoke about this tool, he wrote: "Do you need keyword ranking data below Top20 Because it's likely going away..."
Do you need keyword ranking data below Top20?
— Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 (@timsoulo) September 15, 2025
Because it's likely going away...
You might've heard the news - Google is dropping the "&num=100" parameter, which allowed SEO rank tracking tools to pull the top 100 search results in a single page load.
Ramping up the data pulls… pic.twitter.com/fIfTgGZGXw
Accuranker is not happy about this:
Yup. Tough times...
— Emil @ AccuRanker (@emvhaccuranker) September 13, 2025
In any event, I did reach out to Google about the 100 parameter change and I am waiting to hear back.
Just be careful reporting with third party tools until we know more. Some tool providers are saying they are okay, by the way:
Proud to announce that seoClarity users are unaffected by this change https://t.co/AO0jSZyO4F
— Mark Traphagen 🏳️🌈 (they/them) (@marktraphagen) September 15, 2025
Forum discussion at X.
