Google Search Console · Status at source date: Newsletter archive
Google confirms Search Console impressions inflated since May 2025 due to a logging error
Google has admitted that a logging error has been preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions since May 13, 2025. The error involved third-party scrapers: including tools such as SerpApi used by AI systems to scrape Google organic results: being incorrectly logged as impressions.
What changed
Elie Berreby, who flagged the issue months ago, notes that Google's claim that clicks and other metrics were unaffected is mathematically impossible: if impressions were inflated while clicks remained constant, CTR would necessarily be depressed, and average position figures would also be skewed. The correction has been applied as of April 3.
Why it matters for advertisers
For you, this means any CTR benchmarks, impression-based analysis, or average position data from May 2025 onward should be treated as unreliable until Google confirms the corrected data range: and year-on-year comparisons spanning this period require particular caution.
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Original newsletter text and archive evidence
Google confirms Search Console impressions inflated since May 2025 due to a logging error
Google has admitted that a logging error has been preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions since May 13, 2025. The error involved third-party scrapers: including tools such as SerpApi used by AI systems to scrape Google organic results: being incorrectly logged as impressions. Elie Berreby, who flagged the issue months ago, notes that Google's claim that clicks and other metrics were unaffected is mathematically impossible: if impressions were inflated while clicks remained constant, CTR would necessarily be depressed, and average position figures would also be skewed. The correction has been applied as of April 3.
For you, this means any CTR benchmarks, impression-based analysis, or average position data from May 2025 onward should be treated as unreliable until Google confirms the corrected data range: and year-on-year comparisons spanning this period require particular caution.
Source captured . No explicit first-contributor label was provided for this update.
