Google confirmed that a logging error inflated Search Console impression data from May 2025 to April 2026. The issue is now fixed going forward, but historical data will not be corrected. SEOs need to rebaseline their reporting.
Your impressions did not actually drop. Google just stopped overcounting them. The distinction matters when your client or board is asking why organic visibility fell.
Google has confirmed that a logging error prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions between May 13, 2025 and April 27, 2026. That is nearly 50 weeks of inflated impression data.
The fix is live. Impressions reported from April 28 onward should be accurate. But Google is not correcting the historical data. The 50 weeks of inflated numbers will remain in your Search Console account permanently.
Clicks were not affected. The bug only touched impressions, which means click-through rates calculated during that period were artificially depressed. If your CTR looked like it was declining through 2025 and into early 2026, this bug is likely part of the explanation.
The duration of Google's Search Console impression data logging error, from May 2025 to April 2026
The practical impact is significant. Any SEO reporting that used Search Console impressions as a performance metric during the affected period is unreliable. Year-over-year comparisons will be distorted for the next 12 months because the inflated 2025-2026 baseline will make current numbers look like a decline.
Google's fix announcement was characteristically understated. They updated an existing data anomalies support page rather than issuing a dedicated announcement. For a tool that the entire SEO industry relies on for performance measurement, nearly a year of bad data deserves more than a quiet footnote.
There is also a separate, unrelated issue. Google confirmed that a different logging error has been affecting reporting for Job listing and Job details search appearance types since April 16, 2026. Impressions and clicks for job-related rich results are not being reported at all. Google says this is a reporting issue, not an indexing problem.
Why it matters
Search Console is the primary measurement tool for organic search performance. When its data is wrong for a year, every SEO strategy review, client report and board presentation based on that data is compromised.
For Australian businesses that use organic search as a growth channel, the implications are practical. If you made strategic decisions based on impression trends during the affected period, those decisions may have been based on faulty signals. A perceived decline in visibility could have been nothing more than a measurement artefact.
What to do about it
Google fixed the problem. They did not fix the data. That second part is now your job.