Impressions down? 📉 Blame this hidden Google change

Hello, my friend!

How is your week going?

If you’ve been hanging around the SEO community lately, you might have seen this news:

👉 Google is testing (or maybe permanently removing) the &num=100 parameter.

This little trick used to let SEO tools pull the top 100 keyword positions. Now, Google is basically cutting it down to the top 20 results only.

Why this change matters ⚡

• Rank trackers may struggle to give you the full top 100 view you’re used to seeing.

• Since most SEO tools rely on &num=100, impressions beyond page 2 might not show up.

• You might notice a drop in impressions inside Google Search Console.

The shift started on September 10th, and that’s exactly when I noticed a drop in impressions for my website in Search Console:

We don’t know whether that’s a temporary measure or a permanent update (honestly, it looks like the latter), but if you notice an impressions drop for your website, you know what causes it.

I was curious to learn what the top industry players say about this shift.

As a Semrush Ambassador, here’s the response I’ve got from the Semrush team regarding this issue:

I’ve also stumbled upon the following post from Ahrefs’ CMO, Tim Soulo.

We may see Ahrefs adding the top 100 ranking at an additional fee.

We will see…

And just to add more spice to the chaos… don’t forget Google’s August Spam Update is still rolling out, which means search results are pretty volatile right now.

My honest take 💭

If you’re feeling frustrated, you’re not alone. Google changes its algorithms so often that it can feel impossible to predict what’s coming next.

But here’s what I’ve learned after 5+ years of doing SEO:
👉 The only metric that really matters is whether your work drives business results.

For example, my website generated over $20,000 by August of this year. It’s had plenty of drops in impressions and clicks this year, but the revenue is steady (and even growing), and that’s the real win.

At the end of the day, impressions come and go. But if your SEO keeps moving your business forward—that’s all that counts. 🚀

My keyword research process for SEO: step-by-step

I started doing SEO back in 2019, and one of the very first tasks I got was keyword research.

At that time, I had no idea what I was doing.

I remember spending an entire day just staring at an Excel sheet, trying to figure out how to sort the keywords and which keyword metrics actually mattered for the business. It felt overwhelming because I knew if I picked the wrong keywords, it would be a huge waste of time with no results.

It took me years of trial and error to finally learn how to research keywords quickly, without checking every single idea one by one.

These days, I use the following strategies to research keywords depending on the need:

• If I already have a keyword idea, I check its ranking potential.

• If I have no clue where to start, I plug in one seed keyword and generate thousands of keyword ideas.

• I conduct a competitor analysis to steal their top traffic generation keywords aligned with my business needs.

I go deep into all of these methods in my SEO ebook (it’s 110 pages long because I literally break everything down step by step).

In my newest guide, I’ve pulled out the most critical parts from the keyword research chapter and summarized them into clear steps you can follow.

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• Google hit my site … then I doubled my traffic, where I show the impact of the Google Core Update on various websites (including mine), and highlight common characteristics of the top-performing sites.

• August Affiliate report, where I break down exactly how my website made $4,199.25.

• Optimize like a Pro: Here's what I do: I use these 9 content optimization strategies to rank on page one.

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• My Approach to Affiliate Marketing: Mistakes, learnings & new strategy

• How I ranked #8 on Google in just 6 days: The SEO strategy that got me on Google in a few days.

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Have a great weekend!

Victoria

P.S. If you missed my previous newsletter, you can check it out here: Is ChatGPT really sending traffic?