Google found to have overreported impressions in Search Console, showing more than actually displayed for 11 months

Google updated the Search Console help page and revealed that impressions since May 13, 2025 had been recorded inaccurately in Search Console's Performance report and reported as higher than they actually were.

According to the company, the number of impressions displayed in Search Console may decrease over the next several weeks as it implements a fix.

Impressions were overreported for 11 months

According to the Search Console help page that Google updated on April 3, impressions since May 13, 2025 had been recorded inaccurately in Search Console's Performance report.

The company says the cause of the inaccurate impression counts was an error in log recording.

This issue is expected to be fixed over the coming weeks, and as a result the number of impressions shown in the Performance report may appear to decrease.

That means Google had been displaying impression data in the Performance report as higher than the actual figures for about 11 months.

Google explained that this issue affected only the logging of impression data, and that clicks and other metrics were not affected.

At this time, no specific timing for the fix has been provided, but it is expected to be resolved over the coming weeks.

Regarding this matter, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince pointed out that the period when Google was inflating impression counts coincided with the period when Google's AI Overviews were crushing actual traffic, hinting at a possible connection.

AI Overviews are reducing website traffic

According to an Axios article, over the past two years, large publishers with more than 100,000 page views per day have seen traffic from search engines decline by 22%, while small publishers have seen a decline of as much as 60%.

My website has also been severely affected, and according to Search Console data, even though impressions in Google Search have stayed almost the same or increased and average position has also improved, page views have fallen by more than half due to a sharp drop in click-through rate. (Note: Due to the issue, the impression data may be inaccurate.)

In addition, the decline in ad rates has also become a problem, and my website's current ad revenue has fallen to about one-third of its peak.

In the background of these issues, it is believed that Google began displaying AI-generated summaries at the top of some search results.

Because a summary that compiles information from various websites is displayed at the top of the search results, users end up satisfied just by reading the summary and no longer click through to web pages.

Googleの邪魔な「AIによる概要」を消す・非表示にする方法

Googleは、一部のクエリーで検索結果の上部に生成AIによる概要を表示しています。この記事では、Google検索に表示される「AIによる概要」の表示頻度を減らす方法と完全に消す方法について説明します。

May 19, 2024

Google claims that even after the introduction of AI Overviews, the overall volume of organic clicks from Google Search to websites has remained relatively stable, and average click-through rate and clicks have actually increased, but in reality many website operators, including myself, are skeptical of this claim.

In response to these issues, Cloudflare is testing a "pay per crawl" feature that lets websites charge AI for content usage, while Microsoft is testing "Publisher Content Marketplace," which allows publishers to grant paid licenses for content use to AI companies.

CloudflareがAIへのコンテンツ利用料の請求に対応　AIクローラーは標準でブロックへ

CDNやDDoS攻撃対策などを提供するCloudflareが、AI開発企業のクローラーに対してコンテンツ利用料を請求する機能を発表しました。また、Cloudflareに新しく登録したアカウントでは、AI開発企業のクローラーをデフォルトでブロックするとのことです。

July 3, 2025

Also, in January of this year, Google revealed that it had begun considering a feature that would allow website operators to opt out of AI Overviews.

Conclusion

It has become clear that Google had been reporting impression data in Search Console as higher than the actual figures for about 11 months.

This issue is expected to be fixed within the next few weeks, and as a result the impression figures displayed in Search Console may decrease.