On 3 April 2026, Google confirmed a logging error in Search Console that inflated impression data from May 2025 onward. Clicks weren’t affected.
The fix is rolling out now, so impression counts will drop across the board over the coming weeks.
Here’s what we’re doing about it for the clients whose SEO reporting we manage.
What happened
A logging error introduced on 13 May 2025 caused Google Search Console to over-count impressions.
The bug went undetected for almost a year until several SEO practitioners flagged anomalies in their data on 30 March 2026.
Google acknowledged the issue publicly on 3 April via the Search Console Data Anomalies page.
The key details:
- Impressions were inflated. Google hasn’t disclosed the scale, but it affected all Search Console properties.
- Click data remained accurate throughout. Actual traffic to sites was unaffected.
- Click-through rate was artificially depressed as a result, because the same clicks divided by inflated impressions produces a lower CTR.
- Any year-on-year comparison that includes May 2025 onward is unreliable for impressions and CTR. Click comparisons remain valid.
Google is now rolling out the correction, so impression numbers will decline over the coming weeks as the data normalises.
What we’re telling our clients
We manage SEO across multiple client accounts, and this affects every one of them. The message we’re including in reports this month:
If you see large impression drops in the next few weeks whilst clicks remain stable, this is most likely the bug correction, not a ranking decline.
The bigger question: what are impressions worth in 2026?
Impressions have been losing relevance as a primary metric for a while, and the current SERP layout accelerates that.
The standard results page is no longer ten blue links. AI Overviews sit at the top for an increasing number of queries. Featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, knowledge panels, local packs, and shopping carousels all push organic listings further down, along with Google Ads taking more real estate about the fold. An “impression” in Search Console means your URL appeared somewhere on that results page. Google’s own definition is a user “seeing, or potentially seeing” a link, it does not necessarily require the user to scroll to your position.
Zero-click searches continue to grow. Research found that close to 60% of Google searches end without a click to any external website. CTR for organic results has been declining year on year, and AI Overviews have accelerated that further. This is why we track clicks and conversions as primary KPIs, with impressions treated as a directional signal at best.
The shift also reinforces why AI visibility tracking matters alongside traditional Search Console data. Google does count AI Overview citations as impressions in Search Console, but they’re lumped in with standard organic data. There’s no way to filter or separate them. If your brand is being cited in AI summaries but not in traditional blue links, or vice versa, Search Console won’t tell you which. Understanding how LLM optimisation differs from traditional SEO is becoming a practical reporting requirement.
What to do now
The impression bug should be fixed in the coming weeks and webmasters will see a drop in impression count dating back to last year. The broader shift in what search results look like and how users interact with them is permanent. If your SEO reporting still leads with impressions as a headline metric, use this as the prompt to restructure around numbers that reflect actual business outcomes.
