Google just stated that “A logging error is preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions from May 13, 2025 onward” (April 3, 2026). I welcome the correction, but Google isn’t being fully transparent.

The impressions were, at least in part, inflated because Google logged third-party scrapers, such as SerpApi, used by OpenAI to scrape Google’s organic search results to improve its own AI-generated answers. I explained this in detail after Google deprecated the &num=100 URL parameter.

There’s also a high probability that Google Search counted its own AI overviews containing brand mentions or links as impressions (and we know these rarely lead to actual clicks).

This Google statement that “𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆” is, of course, categorically false and deeply misleading.

​It is mathematically impossible for impressions to be inflated while clicks remain the same without Click-Through Rate (CTR) taking a massive hit. Since CTR = Clicks / Impressions, artificially inflated impressions will tank CTR.

Furthermore, if these “phantom” impressions were consistently logged at specific positions, the Average Position metric is also artificially skewed.

Both the Click-Through Rate (CTR) and average positions were directly impacted as I started to explain 3 months ago in this blog post: Google Search ranking improvements are artificial. Here’s why.