Google seems to be successfully blocking enough of the attempts of scrapers from trying to scrape data from its search results page over the past few weeks than it has in a long time. We reported this a few weeks ago, and I am surprised to see that many tools still struggle with Google Search reporting.
Back in July, Google started to test using goto redirects in the search results to better identify and block scrapers. I assume this was not directly aimed at Google tracking tools that SEOs use but rather the AI bots scraping its search results and Google's duel with SerpApi. Google has also recently been testing numerous ways to verify humans and higher rates than before - which is likely how Google is giving these scrapers a hard time. Let's not forget the num 100 change from 2025. Remeber when Google was hiring an anti scraper engineeer a year ago?
That being said, I spoke with Derek Perkins from Nozzle again about the issue. He has been the most transparent about the issues with me and he told me that there is a three-pronged approach that Google is taking including:
(1) Super wide IP blocking, which targets major residential proxy networks
(2) A significant increase in the use of captchas
(3) Google is injecting bad data into suspect SERPs so that when the tools do scrape the results, they get the wrong data in some cases.
Early this morning, he published an amazing deep dive on what he is seeing - he wrote Poisoned Google SERPs - "Since September 2026, Google has been poisoning the SERPs it serves rank trackers: complete, normal-looking pages whose results have been swapped out. Nothing on the page gives it away. Each keyword’s own history does." Here is what he found:
- 8.0% of SERPs came back poisoned
- Blocked first, then poisoned
- The page looks normal. The results don’t.
- Social sites and forums fill the gap
- Tracked sites fall out of the top 10
- It passes within days
The first time I reported on this, I did not hear back from most of the tools I reached out to by the time I published. Several others later posted notices on their websites, blogs or in the tools to tell customers about issues. Some of those were related to the goto redirects, when the truth is, the goto redirects are the easy part for the tools to handle. Sistrix commented on this, Data for SEO also posted something on its status page, SE Ranking posted this morning that for Google rankings it is "missing positions for some keywords" but most of the issue has been resolved, Advanced Web Rankings posted about the issues, as did Morningscore and some others. But many did not get back to me or confused the goto redirects with the new issues occurring.
The third approach, injecting bad data, concerns me the most. I suspect most tools won't pick up on this issue too quickly and thus think all is good when Google may be just toying with them.
Again, I don't think Google is taking these efforts to block the tools SEOs use but rather to go after AI bots and SerpApi.
That being said, Google does offer a whole portal of information about rankings and more in Search Console. It might not be enough for what most SEOs need but Google does give us a lot of data there. Well, not click or query data for generative AI search, like AI Overviews and AI Mode...
There are tons of complaints about the tools not providing reliable data, as the issue become more visible, here is just a sampling of those complaints or posts:
Trying to share some findings on this but rank trackers are too unreliable at the moment 😩😩😩
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) October 8, 2026
Regarding the visibility tools having a tough time accurately tracking sites right now, here's another good example. This site got hammered on 9/29 during the spam update. 100% confirmed by the site owner to me... ahrefs accurately picked up the drop, Semrush way late picking it up (but eventually did), and then Sistrix still doesn't show the drop. Welcome to SEO visibility tracking in (late) 2026. Will be interesting to see how this goes over time. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 7, 2026
@RyanJones We talked about that on the show today there's more and more things that are getting blocked like RSS feeds from Reddit are going away because they don't want the ice scraping them
— Kristine (@schachin on Tw*tter(NOW)) 🇺🇦 (@schachin) October 2, 2026
Google is blocking scrapers in new ways again... But here's the interesting part. I know 100% that certain sites dropped and some recovered with the 9/4 unconfirmed update. When checking one that dropped by nearly 100%, and then fully recovered, here is what the big 3 tools show.
ahrefs picks up the recovery. Sistrix does NOT pick up the recovery. Semrush shows recovery, but it lagged a bit. So I think ahrefs is able to still scrape ok, Semrush is still scraping ok, but slower, and Sistrix is way behind. Stay tuned.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 18, 2026
I have documented and handed off MozCast as best as I'm able, so I hope it will continue. Google certainly doesn't make it easy to maintain.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr-pete.bsky.social) October 9, 2026 at 4:32 PM
@rustybrick SEO data analytics life is like this nowadays! https://t.co/aBDBhwjs9h
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Trackers are off for sure .
— Robert O'Haver 🇺🇦 (@RobertOHaver) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick They don’t work at all atm
— BowTiedWookie (@BowTiedWookie) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Tracking tools have been noisy for months on our end too. Spot-checking a few queries in an incognito window has been the only way I trust a movement right now.
— Alex Wolk (@alexwolk1) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick They are able to detect bot traffic and instead of blocking them, they are poisoning the results with junk webpages
— Antony Deroshan (@antonyderoshan) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick Nothing matches the SERPs.
— Marty Eigner (@martyeigner3) October 10, 2026
@rustybrick Looks like trackers are paying for Google making SERP scraping expensive: num=100 gone, JS required. Most now sample instead of counting, so some daily swings are measurement noise. GSC trend first.
— Daniel Skov Jacobsen (@DSJACOBSEN) October 9, 2026
@rustybrick At the end of Sept/early Oct., they were definitely broken. Some stuff seems to be coming back ok (in SE Ranking and Ahrefs), and I never really saw issues with Semrush. Luckily, SE Ranking allows for manual refreshes, which seems to help.
— Sarah (she/her) (@SarahBlocksidge) October 9, 2026
How are you all coping with the tools not being able to report 100% properly over the past several weeks?
Forum discussion at X.
Update: Some updates from the tool providers since I posted this:
- Why Google ranking data collection is changing, Sistrix
- How AccuRanker Handles Poisoned SERPs, AccuRanker
⚡ An update for SE Ranking customers on Google ranking data.
Google has recently been returning incomplete or unreliable results to rank trackers across the industry. This can cause keywords to show false drops or appear as not ranking, even when their actual positions haven’t changed.
Our team has made several fixes, and rank checks are now running normally for the vast majority of keywords. Ranking data has also been corrected for all affected dates.
The issue still affects roughly 2% of tracked results, and that share continues to shrink. We’re continuing to work on a fix for those remaining cases.
📍 If a ranking looks wrong, please visit our new status page for troubleshooting steps and the latest updates: https://t.co/cCouFpgRDq
Thank you for your patience and for flagging issues when you spot them. Your feedback helps us identify and correct affected results.
— SE Ranking (@SERanking) October 16, 2026
Semrush sent me this statement:
We can confirm we’ve been seeing the “poisoned SERPs” issue with Google returning inaccurate results since late summer. As soon as we noticed it, our team put additional checks in place to filter and double-check the results we return, and we keep adjusting and extending them as Google’s behavior evolves.The impact on the rankings our users track has been limited, and we have seen no interruptions to the service. There can still be individual cases, most often beyond the first page of results, and we encourage users to report any inconsistencies to our support team so we can look into each one.
Accurate data is our priority, and we’re making sure we adapt quickly as the search landscape changes.
Update: Ahrefs posted its statement on October 22 saying:
Over the past few weeks, we've witnessed an increase in the "poisoning" of search results by Google, where different results are shown to suspected SERP data providers.This is an industry-wide issue impacting many companies in our space. Depending on the data provider, we're seeing between 5% and 20% of search results affected in this way.
We already have multiple filters in place to detect and reject the abnormal results and request accurate replacements. We're also cleaning up any past results that may have been affected.
We’ll update you on any further developments through dashboard notifications.
Search engines regularly make changes, and what works to get accurate data today may not work tomorrow. We are continually monitoring the situation, and our aim remains to provide the most accurate and actionable data possible.
Update: Accuranker posted even more details about new blocking attempts since October 19th.
Accuranker posted more details on newer Google poisoning efforts against Google scraper tools https://t.co/nSU1ugBgRs https://t.co/MIQyctDkMg
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 26, 2026
Update: Demandsphere also posted its update here about these issues.
Update: Semrush posted an official statement with more details on its blog on October 27th:
Screenshots of the post https://t.co/SUAUhxmeWe
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 27, 2026
