Google has been feeding rank trackers bad data, so lead your report with calls

The ranking line in your monthly marketing report comes from a tool that asks Google for results the way a robot does. Since September, Google has been answering some of those robots wrong. Ahrefs said on October 22 that, depending on the data provider, it is seeing between 5% and 20% of search results affected. Semrush called it “an industry-wide issue affecting data providers across the SEO space” on October 27. Ahrefs says its page-one data has largely recovered, but neither vendor says the problem is over.

Poisoned results look normal

Rank trackers don’t search from your truck. They send automated requests to Google and record where each site shows up. Since mid-September, some of the pages Google returns to those requests look normal but differ from what a typical person searching would see, according to Semrush’s October 27 update.

No error shows up. The tool records the wrong page as your position, and it lands in the report like any other number. Google hasn’t commented publicly (Semrush, October 27).

More than a quarter of searches since mid-September

Nozzle, a rank-tracking company, publishes running research on this. Its Poisoned Google SERPs study (updated November 3, data through November 3) finds page 1 or 2 poisoned on 27.6% of searches on average since September 13, against a 0.28% baseline before that date.

Nozzle reports the rate eased in mid-October, then climbed to its worst level yet in early November: 68.6% on November 2, against a September peak of 43.5%.

Google is also ignoring part of some searches

Nozzle’s separate Google Plays Dumb study (October 22, updated November 3) tracks results where Google ignores part of the search. Since September 16, that happened on 13.1% of page 1 or 2 results, against 0.06% before.

On those pages, a tracked site misses the top 10 66% of the time, and 62% of the pages come back normal on the next check within three days.

In a monthly report, that shows up as a phantom drop: a keyword falls off page one and comes back the next month, with no change to your site.

What the tool vendors say

• Ahrefs (October 22, updated November 6): between 5% and 20% of search results affected, depending on the data provider. Ahrefs is filtering abnormal results, cleaning up past data and “continually monitoring the situation.” Its November 6 update says page-one data is “largely recovered and stable,” while results on page two and beyond may update more slowly.
• Semrush (October 27): an industry-wide issue. Semrush excludes clearly invalid results and flags suspect ones for recollection, and says “We continue to refine these processes.” Its advice to its own users: if you see unexpected ranking changes, compare them against your own data, such as Google Search Console.

As of November 11, neither page says the problem is resolved.

What about Google Maps?

For most contractors, the ranking that matters is the map pack. BrightLocal, a local rank-tracking company, said on October 16 that Google Maps results and its own grid-based Local Search Grid are not affected, and that map pack and Local Finder results are less affected. That is one vendor reporting on its own tools, and it hasn’t published how it reached those ratings. Nozzle’s research looks at the local pack shown inside Google’s regular results, not at Maps. So map-based grid scans look like the steadier number for now, but a map pack position in a report can still be off.

Rankings were never the goal

You don’t pay for marketing to get a keyword position. You pay for it to make the phone ring, and rankings were only ever a rough stand-in for that. The stand-in is now less reliable, so a report that leads with it can show gains or losses that never happened.

If your report opens with “you moved up for 14 keywords,” ask whoever sends it which tool produced those positions and what that tool’s vendor has said about Google’s data this month. Then ask what the report says about calls.

Lead with calls and booked jobs

The numbers worth leading with are calls, qualified leads, booked jobs, and the performance data in your Google Business Profile dashboard. They come from your phone system, your CRM and Google’s own reporting to you as the profile owner, not from a robot asking Google questions. They’re also the numbers that pay for the marketing.

For how the map pack and your profile fit together, see our guide to local SEO for contractors and how we handle SEO for home service companies.

If you’re not sure where your report’s numbers come from, we’ll show you. Get your free audit.

Sources

• Ahrefs, “An update on Google’s poisoned search results”, October 22, updated November 6, 2026
• Semrush, “Poisoned SERPs: An update on Google ranking data in Semrush”, October 27, 2026
• Nozzle, “Poisoned Google SERPs”, published October 10, updated November 3, 2026
• Nozzle, “Google Plays Dumb”, published October 22, updated November 3, 2026
• BrightLocal, “Google’s anti-scraping measures continue to evolve causing inconsistent rankings”, October 16, 2026
• Search Engine Roundtable, “Third-Party Google Rank Tracking Struggling Now”, October 12, 2026