Navigating the Google SERP Changes in September 2025

Google’s recent SERP changes broke rank trackers, but your traffic is likely fine. Here’s how to adapt.

Around September 10-15, 2025, Google quietly disabled the &num=100 URL parameter. The immediate result was chaos in rank-tracking dashboards (a direct consequence of tools now seeing fewer total results), and a visible drop in impressions within Google Search Console.

Despite these changes, our clicks in Google Search Console have remained steady and CTR went slightly up (less impressions). Our Authority Score from SEMrush also increased, demonstrating that proper SEO fundamentals like schema markup and rich snippets continue to deliver results regardless of tracking tool limitations.

What Google Has Actually Done: The Confirmed SERP Shift

The core of this Google SERP transformation is the disabling of the `&num=100` URL parameter. This technical parameter was the secret weapon that allowed SEO tracking tools and scrapers to pull dozens, or even a hundred, results for a single query.

Around September 10-15, 2025, Google quietly made this parameter obsolete. As reported by Search Engine Land, Google officially stated that the use of this parameter “is not something that we formally support.” This was not a bug but an intentional change.

This Change Doesn’t Alter Core Google SERP Rankings

It is crucial to understand what this Google SERP modification does and does not mean. The actual core ranking algorithms have not been publicly reported as changed by this specific event.

Your website’s underlying relevance and authority have not been directly penalized by this update. The disruption is primarily in how keyword tracking tools access and report data. The fundamental way the Google SERP works, in terms of evaluating websites, remains intact.

Best Practices to Stay On Top of SERP Volatility

While premium tools like SEMrush still provide full rank tracking, the landscape has shifted. Diversify your data sources and don’t rely solely on third-party tools.

Optimize for the Top 10 and SERP Features:

• Structure your content to be snippet-friendly by:
  • Using clear, concise headings that ask a direct question.
  • Providing a direct answer immediately following the heading in a single paragraph or list.
  • Implementing FAQ Schema to directly feed into “People Also Ask” boxes.
  • Using How-To Schema for instructional content.
  • Adding Product Schema with price, availability, and review ratings.
  • Employing Table of Contents schema to help Google understand your page’s structure.
  • Structuring data in simple tables for easy extraction.
  • Using bulleted or numbered lists to break down multi-step processes or related points.

Diversify Your Strategy:

• Create strong supporting content for long-tail terms.
• Build intelligent internal links through topic clusters.

Final Thoughts

The September 2025 Google SERP changes haven’t broken rank tracking for premium tools like SEMrush—they’ve absorbed the impact by scaling their infrastructure. However, the 10x increase in backend costs will likely lead to price increases across the industry as tools pass these expenses to customers.

The real takeaway isn’t to abandon rank tracking, but to balance it with first-party data from Google Search Console. Focus on what matters: creating user-centric content, implementing strategic schema markup, and optimizing for rich results. These fundamentals remain constant regardless of what changes Google makes to their API access.

It was discouraging to see our impressions drop across all our sites, but the fact that our clicks held steady—and our SEMRush Authority Score even improved—was a welcome reassurance.