The Death of Reliable Ranking Data?

Last week Barry Schwartz wrote an article about Google possibly testing dropping 100 search results parameter.

I noticed this last Thursday/Friday in Google Search Console, but Brodie Clark noticed this over the weekend and wrote a great article about seeing HUGE declines in GSC Impression data across sites.

The SEO content goblins indeed confirm this. Impressions across sites are down, HUGE, since last week Tuesday/Wednesday to present.

Impressions are way down, clicks are stable --- but that is causing Average Position rank, and Click-Through-Rates to surge.

No official word from Google, yet, on this change, test, bug, whatever is going on, but whatever is going on is causing Third-Party SEO Tools MAJOR issues. Wild fluctuations - missing data, etc.

The SEMRush sensor is stuck on September 10th - which is highly unusual for them - and other tools are showing HUGE spikes to volatility like SISTRIX.

This is all while Google is still rolling out the August 2025 SPAM Update.

This begs the question - is this the death of reliable third-party rank tracking tools?

SEO's now have the job how to explain this to non-technical CMO's in their QBRs and monthly reporting and weekly reporting.

Sigh, Google continues to work against, and make it harder for SEO's to help Google make the web a better place. Some Third-Party tools like seoClarity are saying their data is unaffected, while others posted on social media like RankTracker that it is.

Google will post something vague, or not even respond at all, all the while they announce some new 'achievements' section this morning - while GSC data is for a lack of a better word - totally usable and unreliable now.

Google likes - to tell people their Case Studies on AVG. CTR for AI Overviews are not accurate - but then make a change - no communication. Maybe people's case studies are unreliable because the data their analysis are using - FROM GOOGLE - is unreliable.

The reliability of third-party tools - and now Google tools - is becoming less and less reliable, accurate, etc. SEOs rely on a variety tools and types of data from different data sources to make our decisions on strategy. SEOs have to deal with data that involves Last-Touch analysis, and Zero-Click-SERP.

Stay tuned - more on this.

I suspect that this week we might see the Spam update finish, and I think right after that we might see another Core Update --- this is normally about the time the last 2 or 3 years where we see Google gear up for the end of the year and holiday season by making changes to the SERP. I suspect we will see another 2 Core Updates before end of the year, and maybe another SPAM update before end of the year.

Buckle-up SEO's --- Google just made SEO'ing harder, and SEO's continually are having a harder and harder team with measuring, accurately, SEO and Organic performance.