Google Search Console is fixing a long-running reporting bug that has been inflating impression counts since May last year. If you keep an eye on your search visibility, that means one thing is quite likely over the next few weeks: your impressions may drop even if nothing has actually gone wrong with your rankings, traffic or leads.
For plenty of businesses in Bath and across Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, Bristol and Gloucestershire, that is exactly the sort of thing that can cause a mild Monday panic. The graph goes down, someone spots it in a report, and suddenly everyone wonders whether Google has changed the rules again. In this case, the calmer explanation is probably the right one. Google says this is a data logging problem inside Search Console, not a real-world change in how often your website is being shown.
According to Google’s own data anomalies page, a logging error has been affecting Search Console impression reporting from 13 May 2025 onward. The fix is now rolling out and will take a few weeks to settle. Google has said clicks and other metrics were not affected.
That distinction matters. Impressions tell you how often your pages appeared in search results. Useful, yes. But they are still a visibility metric rather than an outcome metric. If the impression number has been a bit too generous for months, the correction may look dramatic in a chart even though the business itself feels perfectly normal.
What has actually changed
The important update is not that Google Search suddenly got worse. It is that Search Console has been overstating one part of the reporting. Google has acknowledged the bug publicly and said the correction will happen over the coming weeks. So if you notice impression totals sliding in April, that may simply be the tool becoming more accurate.
That is why it would be a mistake to treat an impression dip on its own as proof that your SEO has fallen off a cliff. Before anyone starts rewriting the whole website or tearing apart ad budgets, it is worth asking a simpler question: are the things that actually matter to the business changing too?
Why this matters to local businesses
Many smaller organisations do not have the luxury of a big analytics team separating signal from noise. A Bath law firm, a Somerset retailer, a Wiltshire trades business or a Bristol charity may have one person checking Search Console between a dozen other jobs. If that person sees a downward line, the natural assumption is that demand is weakening.
Sometimes that is true. This time, it may not be.
If your clicks stay broadly steady, your enquiries remain healthy, and your rankings for important terms do not look wildly different, this Search Console fix is probably a reporting tidy-up rather than a genuine visibility collapse. That is especially relevant for businesses that rely on local search, where small swings in impressions are common anyway because search demand changes with seasonality, weather, events, school holidays and general market mood.
For anyone already investing in SEO in Bath, this is a good reminder not to judge performance on one metric in isolation. Search Console is a very useful tool, but it is still just a tool. It is not the business itself.
What you should check first
Start with clicks, enquiries and revenue rather than impressions. If impressions drop but clicks hold up, that tells a very different story from a situation where both visibility and traffic fall together.
Then check whether the change lines up with Google’s published timeline. Because the issue dates back to May 2025, some businesses may find that long-term year-on-year comparisons suddenly look a bit wonky. That does not make the reports useless, but it does mean they need a touch more common sense than usual.
It is also worth being careful with client reporting, board reports and internal summaries this month. If you regularly share Search Console charts, add a note explaining that Google is correcting an impressions logging error. That can save a lot of unnecessary fuss and stop people making decisions based on the shape of a graph rather than the substance underneath it.
For some organisations, this is also a decent excuse to tidy up wider measurement. Make sure Google Analytics, form tracking, call tracking and lead handling still give you a clear view of what happens after the click. If the top-of-funnel reporting is wobbling, stronger measurement lower down becomes even more valuable. That is true whether you lean mostly on SEO or use a broader search marketing mix that includes paid traffic as well.
What not to do
Do not panic and start changing pages that were working perfectly well last week. Do not assume a corrected impression count means Google suddenly dislikes your site. And do not let one reporting anomaly talk you into a grand theory about AI search, algorithm upheaval or local demand disappearing overnight.
There may well be businesses whose search performance genuinely changes this month for unrelated reasons. That still happens. The point is simply that Search Console impression drops now need more context than usual before they mean anything useful.
The sensible takeaway
For most local businesses, this is more of a reporting clean-up than a marketing emergency. Google is fixing an overcounting issue. The charts may look less flattering for a bit. That does not automatically mean your website is doing worse.
The sensible response is wonderfully unglamorous: keep calm, compare impressions against clicks and real enquiries, and make decisions based on business outcomes rather than dashboard drama. If your website still needs clearer messaging, stronger local landing pages or better conversion paths, that work remains worthwhile. But it should be driven by what customers are doing, not by one corrected metric.
And yes, if an impressions graph suddenly dips this week, there is a fair chance the answer is not doom. It is just bookkeeping.
