If you’ve been keeping up to date with the latest news on how performance reporting operates, you might have already heard about (or seen) a decline in impressions within Google Search Console (GSC). While this sounds like a concerning issue, particularly when it’s a key metric that a lot of businesses are invested in, it’s nothing major to be worried about. Ultimately, the change in reporting metrics stems from a bug and isn’t as indicative of reduced performance, algorithm updates, or SEO issues the way you might expect.
What Actually Happened
A logging error is preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions from May 13, 2025 onward. This issue will be resolved over the next few weeks; as a result, you may notice a decrease in impressions in the Search Console Performance report. Clicks and other metrics were not affected by the error, and this issue affected data logging only.
“A logging error is preventing Search Console from accurately reporting impressions from May 13, 2025 onward. This issue will be resolved over the next few weeks; as a result, you may notice a decrease in impressions” – Google Search Console Data Anomalies
Google made the announcement that their algorithm and tracking has been logging certain information incorrectly since May 2025. Essentially, for the last 12 months, impression counts have been higher than they should have been. Google is actively working on rolling out updates to rectify the issue and your data will gradually update over the coming weeks to accurately reflect the real numbers going forward.
What you’ll see as a result is a drop in impressions in your data. However, the important thing to keep in mind is that it’s a reporting metric but isn’t actually indicative of lost visibility or traffic.
What This Means for Performance
The most important takeaway is that clicks, rankings, and actual SEO performance have not been impacted, which are the more relevant and essential metrics to focus on. Since the bug was found, Google has confirmed that the issue was isolated to how impressions were recorded, nothing else. Metrics such as clicks and other performance indicators remain accurate.
If you’re wondering how this stacks up for you and your business and what you should be looking at in the interim, focus on more tangible metrics like clicks, enquiries, and revenue. If all of those are stable, then your SEO performance is stable. What’s changing is simply how impressions are reported on the platform.
Why This Can Look Like a Decline (and Why You Don’t Need to Worry)
Impressions are one piece of the puzzle, but because impressions were previously over-reported, the correction can create the appearance of a sudden drop. This can also impact derived metrics like CTR (click-through rate), which may now appear to improve as impressions decrease.
To give you some context to keep in mind as things are gradually rectified, it’s important to avoid comparing pre-fix and post-fix data directly, as they’re based on different measurement standards.
How We’re Handling This at Reform Digital
We’re proactively accounting for this change across all reporting and client communications. This includes:
- Annotating reporting periods where the fix is rolling out
- Prioritising clicks, conversions, and revenue as core performance metrics
- Re-benchmarking CTR and visibility metrics once data stabilises
What You Should Do
Ultimately, there’s nothing you need to worry about doing yourself, this comes down to a Google issue and it’ll gradually get ironed out. Until everything is fully updated, it’s important to interpret GSC data carefully during this period.
The reporting issue might not affect everyone exactly the same way. If you happen to note a drop in impressions, the key question to look at is whether clicks and conversions are also declining, or if they’re more or less stable. If there’s very little variance from the overall, usual trend in these metrics, you’re likely looking at Google’s reporting correction rather than any real change in SEO performance.
A key thing to keep in mind here is that not all data changes reflect real-world performance and while impressions can be of interest when it comes to reporting, they can’t be considered as a standalone piece of data.
As always, we’ll continue to monitor the performance of all of our clients closely and ensure reporting remains clear, accurate, and focused on what matters most to your business.
