Google killed &num=100: what changed and what’s next
What happened
In mid‑September 2025, Google quietly turned off the &num=100 parameter that forced 100 results per page. Overnight, rank trackers built around 100‑result pagination failed, and Google Search Console (GSC) impressions seemed to drop 50–80%—a measurement artifact, not a traffic crash.
The immediate fallout
- 77% of sites showed “visibility” declines in rank trackers
- 87.7% reported steep GSC impression drops
- Major SEO platforms began re‑architecting crawl and ranking pipelines
How the market reacted
Week 1 (Sept 13–18): Mass panic
A widely shared LinkedIn post by Brodie Clark (710+ reactions) and 130+ Reddit comment threads set off alarms. Agencies fielded “where did our traffic go?” calls (answer: your data moved, not your users).
Weeks 2–4 (Sept 19–30): The scramble
Vendors reworked collection methods and cost models:
- AccuRanker: From full Top‑100 to Top‑30 daily + Top‑100 biweekly
- Ahrefs: ~10× more API calls → sharply higher costs
- AWR: “Absorbing the costs” (read: price rises ahead)
The damage
- B2B SaaS dashboards flipped red as baselines shifted
- Agencies lost clients where the change wasn’t understood
- Tool pricing likely to rise in Q1 2026 (forecast: +10–30%)
- Strategic pivot: from “track everything” to “track what drives revenue”
The bigger picture
This isn’t a blip. Removing &num=100 reduces what scrapers and AI trainers can harvest per page by ~90%. Whether aimed at AI, monetization, or both, the effect is clear: collection is harder and costlier; the old scraping playbook is over.
What to do now
- Prioritize revenue‑linked keywords; retire vanity tracking
- Track Top‑30 daily; sample Top‑100 weekly/biweekly
- Treat GSC as directional, not absolute
- Budget +10–30% for tools in 2026
- Add an annotation around Sept 2025 to explain the break
