Google’s September Shake-Up: Why Your Blog Rankings Dropped and How to Recover in 2025

If you logged into your Google Search Console in mid-September 2025 and felt your stomach drop, you are not alone. Across the web, from digital marketing agencies to independent bloggers, website owners witnessed a sudden, sharp decline in impressions, accompanied by a confusing and often counter-intuitive rise in average ranking position. This event, sparking panicked threads on Reddit and frantic checks of analytics, has been a defining moment for SEO in 2025.

But is this a true Google derank after the September update 2025? Or is something else at play?

The answer is complex. The volatility experienced by webmasters is not the result of a single cause but a convergence of three powerful forces:

1. A significant reporting anomaly in Google Search Console that is skewing data and creating the illusion of a performance cliff.

2. The ever-expanding influence of AI Overviews, which are fundamentally changing user behavior and the relationship between impressions and clicks.

3. The continued, long-term impact of foundational changes from the Google core algorithm update 2024 and other SEO updates in 2025, which prioritize content quality and user experience above all else.

This in-depth research article will dissect each of these factors, demystify the data you're seeing, and provide a comprehensive roadmap to diagnose the real health of your website and build a resilient SEO strategy for the future.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Was My Site Deranked by the September 2025 Update, or Is It a Reporting Glitch?

• What Really Happened: The &num=100 Parameter Change

• Decoding the Symptoms: Why Impressions Dropped and Average Position "Improved"

• Is This a Real "Google Derank"? Separating Fact from Fiction

• Immediate Action Plan: How to Verify Your Actual Traffic

Part 2: Why Are My Clicks Down After SEO Updates in 2025? Understanding 'The Great Decoupling'

• Defining "The Great Decoupling": When Impressions and Clicks Separate

• How AI Overviews Are Rewriting the Rules of SEO

• The Impact on Blogs: Is Your Content Just Fuel for Google's AI?

• Adapting Your Strategy: How to Thrive in an AI-Driven Search Landscape

Part 3: How Does the Google Core Algorithm Update 2024 Still Affect My Rankings?

• Foundational Lessons from the Google Core Algorithm Update 2024

• E-E-A-T: The Unshakeable Pillar of Modern SEO

• The War on Unhelpful, "SEO-First" Content

• How Past Updates Are Still Affecting Your Rankings Today

Part 4: How Do I Diagnose a Real Google Derank After an Update?

Technical SEO Health Check: Crawlability, Indexing, and Speed

• Content Quality and Relevance Audit: Pruning and Refreshing

• Backlink Profile Analysis: Identifying Toxic Links and Lost Authority

• Checking for Google Manual Actions

• Competitive Analysis: Who Is Outranking You and Why?

Part 5: What Is the Recovery Plan for a Ranking Drop After Recent SEO Updates?

• Step 1: Differentiate Reporting Glitches from Real Performance Issues

• Step 2: Double Down on First-Hand Experience and E-E-A-T

• Step 3: Optimize for Clicks and User Engagement, Not Just Impressions

• Step 4: Embrace a Multi-Channel, Brand-First Strategy

• Actionable Recovery Checklist

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Part 1: Was My Site Deranked by the September 2025 Update, or Is It a Reporting Glitch?

Around September 10, 2025, the SEO community lit up with alarm. The common refrain, echoed in forums from Reddit to WebmasterWorld, was a variation of: "Massive drop in impressions on 15 September." Site owners posted Google Search Console (GSC) screenshots showing what looked like a catastrophic performance failure, with desktop impressions falling off a cliff.

However, this widespread panic was largely based on a misunderstanding of a technical change Google made to its search results pages.

What Really Happened: The &num=100 Parameter Change

For years, SEO professionals and their automated tools have used a specific URL parameter (&num=100) to force Google to display 100 search results on a single page, rather than the standard 10. This was an efficient way to scrape large amounts of ranking data quickly.

In mid-September 2025, Google disabled this functionality. Now, search result pages are paginated with a near-infinite scroll, and the ability to load a flat list of 100 results is gone.

This seemingly minor change had a massive ripple effect on data collection:

• SEO Tools: Tools that relied on the &num=100 parameter to gather ranking data began to fail or provide incomplete reports. Their crawlers, which used to see 100 positions on one page load, now only see the top 10-20, drastically reducing the volume of data they collect.

• Google Search Console: GSC’s own reporting systems were impacted. The theory, as discussed by experts and seen on platforms like Search Engine Journal, is that many of the "impressions" being logged for positions 20-100 were not from actual human users but from the vast number of bots and tools using the &num=100 parameter. When Google removed this parameter, these bot-driven impressions vanished overnight.

Decoding the Symptoms: Why Impressions Dropped and Average Position "Improved"

This reporting change created a specific and confusing set of symptoms in GSC:

• Sudden Drop in Impressions: The disappearance of bot-driven impressions for lower-ranking positions (20-100) caused a dramatic drop in the total impression count, primarily on desktop where these tools are most active.

• Sudden "Improvement" in Average Position: Your average position is calculated by averaging the rank of all queries for which your site received an impression. When all the low-ranking impressions (e.g., position #78, #92) suddenly disappeared from the data set, only the higher-ranking impressions (e.g., position #5, #12) were left. This mathematically pulled your average position higher, creating the illusion of a performance improvement.

Is This a Real "Google Derank"? Separating Fact from Fiction

For the vast majority of sites experiencing this specific pattern, this is not a real derank. The phrase "Google derank after September update 2025" is a misnomer in this context. Your site likely did not lose any actual rankings or visibility to human searchers. What you lost was the "vanity" metric of inflated impressions generated by automated systems.

The panic seen on Reddit in threads discussing a "Google derank after September update reddit" is a classic case of misinterpreting data without understanding the underlying cause. 

Immediate Action Plan: How to Verify Your Actual Traffic

Before making any drastic changes to your SEO strategy, you must verify what actually happened.

1. Look Beyond GSC: Do not rely solely on GSC impression data from this period.

2. Check Google Analytics (GA4): Cross-reference the GSC data with your traffic figures in Google Analytics. Did your actual organic user count, sessions, and conversions drop in the same period? For most, the answer will be no. If your real traffic is stable, you can confirm the GSC issue is just a reporting anomaly.

3. Analyze Server Logs: For the most accurate picture, analyze your server logs. They provide raw, unfiltered data on every request made to your server, allowing you to see if traffic from Googlebot and real users has changed.

4. Segment Your Data: In GSC, filter your performance report to look only at mobile traffic. Since the &num=100 parameter was primarily a desktop tool, your mobile impressions should be relatively stable, helping to isolate the issue.

Part 2: Why Are My Clicks Down After SEO Updates in 2025? Understanding 'The Great Decoupling'

While the September 2025 reporting glitch caused acute panic, a more profound, long-term shift is silently eroding website clicks: Google's AI Overviews. Rolled out more broadly throughout 2025, these AI-generated summaries appear at the top of the search results, providing direct answers to user queries.

This has led to a phenomenon dubbed "The Great Decoupling"—a divergence where search impressions can increase, but clicks on organic results plummet.

Defining "The Great Decoupling": When Impressions and Clicks Separate

The Great Decoupling describes the unprecedented separation of search impressions from clicks. For years, webmasters expected clicks to rise and fall along with impressions. Now, many are seeing their GSC reports show soaring impressions while clicks remain flat or, more alarmingly, plummet. Your website can appear more often in search results but ultimately get fewer clicks. Here’s how it works:

• A user searches for "how to prune a rose bush in autumn."

• Google's AI Overview generates a concise, step-by-step answer at the very top of the page, often citing and linking to multiple sources.

• Your blog post might be one of those sources. As a result, your page gets an impression because it was used to generate the answer and is listed as a source.

• However, the user gets their answer directly from the AI Overview and has no reason to click through to your website, leading to a "zero-click search."

This is a fundamental challenge for any business model that relies on website traffic for ad revenue, lead generation, or direct sales.

How AI Overviews Are Rewriting the Rules of SEO

AI Overviews are not a passing trend; they are central to Google's vision for the future of search. This changes the goal of SEO:

• From #1 Rank to #0 Position: The new prime real estate is not the first organic result, but being featured prominently within the AI Overview itself.

• Content as Data Source: Google now views your content as a data source to train and populate its AI models. Your goal is to create content that is so clear, well-structured, and authoritative that Google's AI chooses it as a primary source.

• The Rise of Niche, Long-Tail Queries: Simple, informational queries are the most likely to be answered by AI. Success will increasingly come from targeting complex, multi-step, or highly niche queries that require a depth of explanation an AI summary cannot provide.

Adapting Your Strategy: How to Thrive in an AI-Driven Search Landscape

You cannot stop AI Overviews, but you can adapt to them.

1. Optimize for a Feature: Use clear headings (H2, H3), bulleted lists, numbered steps, and FAQ schemas to structure your content in a way that is easy for AI to parse and feature. Answer questions directly and concisely.

2. Build a Brand, Not Just a Website: If users get their answer from an AI Overview but see your brand cited as the source, you build brand recognition and authority. This can lead to direct traffic later on as users begin to trust and seek out your name.

3. Focus on "Beyond the Answer" Content: Create content that AI cannot easily replicate. This includes unique case studies, proprietary data and research, in-depth personal experiences, interactive tools, and strong, opinionated analysis. Give users a reason to click through for value they can't get in a summary.

4. Diversify Your Traffic: Reduce your dependency on Google organic search. Invest in email marketing, social media communities, YouTube, and other channels that you control directly.

Part 3: How Does the Google Core Algorithm Update 2024 Still Affect My Rankings?

If your traffic drop is real (confirmed by Google Analytics) and predates the September 2025 reporting glitch, the cause likely lies in Google's foundational algorithm updates, particularly the major core updates of 2024. These updates set the stage for everything we are seeing in 2025.

The August 2024 Core Update, which finished rolling out on September 3, 2024, was a pivotal moment. It wasn't about penalizing technical mistakes but about a deep re-evaluation of content quality.

Foundational Lessons from the Google Core Algorithm Update 2024

The 2024 updates, including potential updates like a hypothetical Google core update Dec 2024, continued a clear trajectory: rewarding helpful, satisfying content made for people, and demoting content made primarily to rank on search engines.

A key development was the refinement of E-A-T to E-E-A-T.

E-E-A-T: The Unshakeable Pillar of Modern SEO

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The addition of "Experience" was a game-changer. Google now wants to rank content that demonstrates real, first-hand experience with the topic.

• Experience: Did the author actually use the product they are reviewing? Have they personally navigated the problem they are solving? Content that reads like a summary of other articles will be devalued in favor of content that shows authentic, lived experience.

• Expertise: Is the content written by a credible expert in the field? This is crucial for "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) topics like finance and health.

• Authoritativeness: Is your site and the author recognized as a go-to source for this topic? This is built through high-quality backlinks, mentions from other authoritative sites, and a strong brand presence.

• Trustworthiness: Is your site secure (HTTPS)? Are author bios and contact information clear? Is the content accurate and well-sourced?

Optimizing for E-E-A-T is no longer optional for long-term success.

The War on Unhelpful, "SEO-First" Content

The September 2023 Helpful Content Update (HCU) laid the groundwork, and the 2024 updates built upon it. Google is actively identifying and demoting content that was created simply to capture search traffic without providing real value. This includes:

• Thin, low-quality, AI-generated content that just rephrases existing information.

• Content that promises to answer a question but buries the answer in fluff.

• Broad content that doesn't satisfy the specific intent of a detailed search query.

The 2024 core updates were also designed to help smaller, independent blogs with genuine expertise recover visibility lost to massive content farms that had mastered the old rules of SEO.

How Past Updates Are Still Affecting Your Rankings Today

Google's algorithms are constantly learning. A site that was borderline during a 2024 update might see its rankings slowly erode over time as the system becomes more confident in its quality assessment. If your content doesn't align with the principles of E-E-A-T and helpfulness, any ranking you have is built on unstable ground and is vulnerable to even minor algorithm refreshes.

Part 4: How Do I Diagnose a Real Google Derank After an Update?

If you've confirmed a real traffic drop in Google Analytics, it's time for a full diagnostic audit. The cause could be one or a combination of the following issues.

Technical SEO Health Check: Crawlability, Indexing, and Speed

A sudden, catastrophic drop can often be technical.

• Robots.txt: Check your robots.txt file. A misplaced Disallow: / command can tell Google not to crawl your entire site.

• Noindex Tags: A developer might have accidentally left a noindex tag on key pages or your whole site after a migration, telling Google to remove them from the index. Use GSC's Page Indexing report to check for this.

• Core Web Vitals & Site Speed: A slow site creates a poor user experience. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to test your site's performance. Slow loading times can negatively impact rankings.

• Website Migrations: Did you recently redesign your site or move to a new domain? A botched migration with broken redirects (301s) is a classic cause of massive traffic loss.

Content Quality and Relevance Audit: Pruning and Refreshing

Your content may simply be underperforming.

• Content Decay: Information becomes outdated. An article that was number one in 2023 may no longer be the best resource. Identify pages with declining traffic and refresh them with new, up-to-date information, statistics, and examples.

• Search Intent Mismatch: What a user wants when they search for a keyword can change over time. Search your main keywords in incognito mode. Do the top-ranking results look different from your page? They might be listicles while you have a long-form essay, or they might be product pages while you have an informational post. Align your content with the current intent.

• Content Pruning: Not all content is good content. Low-quality, unhelpful pages can drag down the authority of your entire site. Consider deleting (and redirecting) posts that get no traffic and provide little value.

Backlink Profile Analysis: Identifying Toxic Links and Lost Authority

Backlinks remain a powerful ranking signal.

• Lost Backlinks: Have you lost high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites? Use a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to monitor your lost links and see if you can reclaim them.

• Toxic Backlinks: A sudden influx of spammy, low-quality links (negative SEO) can sometimes trigger Google's spam algorithms. While Google is good at ignoring these, a manual review and disavow process may be necessary in extreme cases for these toxic links.

Checking for Google Manual Actions

While rare, a manual action is a direct penalty from a human reviewer at Google for violating their spam policies. Check the "Manual actions" report in Google Search Console. If you have one, Google will tell you the reason and you must fix the issue and submit a reconsideration request.

Competitive Analysis: Who Is Outranking You and Why?

SEO is a zero-sum game. For you to rise, someone else must fall, and vice-versa. Your drop could simply be due to a competitor doing a better job.

• Analyze the top-ranking pages for your target keywords.

• Is their content more comprehensive?

• Does it demonstrate better E-E-A-T?

• Is their user experience (site speed, mobile-friendliness) superior?

• Do they have a stronger backlink profile?

• Learn from their success and identify weaknesses in your own strategy.

Part 5: What Is the Recovery Plan for a Ranking Drop After Recent SEO Updates?

Navigating the new landscape of SEO updates in 2025 requires a shift from chasing algorithms to building a resilient, user-focused brand.

Step 1: Differentiate Reporting Glitches from Real Performance Issues

First and foremost, use Google Analytics and other traffic sources to confirm if you have a real problem. If your user numbers are stable, you can safely ignore the September 2025 impression drop in GSC and focus your energy on long-term growth.

Step 2: Double Down on First-Hand Experience and E-E-A-T

This is the most important long-term strategy.

• Author Bios: Create detailed author pages and bios that showcase their experience and expertise.

• Show, Don't Just Tell: Instead of saying a product is good, include original photos and videos of you using it. Share personal anecdotes and case studies.

• Cite Sources: Link out to authoritative studies and sources to back up your claims, building trust.

Step 3: Optimize for Clicks and User Engagement, Not Just Impressions

Impressions are a vanity metric in the age of AI Overviews. Clicks and engagement are what matter.

• Master Your Titles and Meta Descriptions: Your page title and meta description are your sales pitch on the SERP. Make them compelling, intriguing, and benefit-driven to entice users to click. Test different variations to improve your Click-Through Rate (CTR) by optimizing your titles and meta descriptions.

• Aim for Rich Snippets: Use structured data (schema markup) to win rich snippets like FAQs, reviews, and how-tos. These stand out on the SERP and can increase CTR.

Step 4: Embrace a Multi-Channel, Brand-First Strategy

Do not let your business live or die by the Google algorithm.

• Build an Email List: This is an audience you own and can contact directly.

• Create a Community: Foster a following on platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook Groups, or Discord.

• Become a Destination: Build a brand so strong that users bypass Google and come directly to your site.

Actionable Recovery Checklist

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: Is the Google ranking drop in September 2025 permanent? A: For most sites, the "drop" seen in Google Search Console is a permanent change in reporting, not a permanent drop in actual rankings. The impression numbers will not return to their previous inflated levels. If you have a real traffic drop confirmed by Google Analytics, its permanence depends on your ability to diagnose and fix the underlying quality or technical issues.

Q2: My traffic dropped after the Google core algorithm update 2024. Can I still recover? A: Yes, recovery is possible but requires significant effort. A drop after a core update is a strong signal that Google has re-evaluated your site's overall quality. Recovery involves a deep audit of your content against E-E-A-T principles, improving user experience, and genuinely making your site more helpful and trustworthy.

Q3: How do I know if my blog was hit by the September update or by AI Overviews? A: Look at the data pattern. A hit from the September 2025 reporting glitch shows a sudden cliff-drop in GSC desktop impressions around Sept 10-15 with stable or improved average position and stable actual traffic in GA4. A hit from AI Overviews is a longer-term trend showing stable or growing impressions but a declining Click-Through Rate (CTR) and flattening or decreasing organic clicks in GA4.

Q4: Is SEO dead in 2025 because of AI? A: SEO is not dead, but it is transforming. The focus is shifting from simple ranking tactics to a more holistic strategy encompassing technical excellence, exceptional content quality (E-E-A-T), brand building, and user experience. The goal is no longer just to rank, but to provide value that compels a click, even when an AI summary is present.