Table of Contents
Google Blocked the Robots. Your Rank Tracker Was One.
The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
"Our ranking report shows us slipping this month, but the phone hasn't changed at all. Which one should I believe?"
Epic Web Studios
Epic Insights
Edition 38  ·  Sep 22, 2026

Your Report Has Two Kinds of Numbers

Google spent this month getting much better at telling a person from a robot in its search results, and it's working. The robots it caught include the ones that build your ranking report. One tracking company says it's now pulling about 80% less data out of Google than it was.
The Big Story

Google Blocked the Robots. Your Rank Tracker Was One.

Here's what's actually happening. Around September 13 Google got much better at blocking automated traffic in its search results, and the rank-tracking tools are what got caught. One rank-tracking company said publicly it's pulling roughly 80% less data than before, and another told the same story. A third posted a status notice on September 16 saying its collection is running at a reduced rate while it adapts. An SEO analyst who validates these tools against real traffic ran a check on a site that had crashed and then fully recovered. One tool caught the recovery. Another caught it late. A third never showed it at all.

Google isn't doing this to your agency. It's blocking bots, and Bing started asking searchers to prove they're human in the same week. Nobody's a villain here.

What it means for the report on your desk is worth knowing, though. Your report has two kinds of numbers in it. Some come from Google directly about your business: Search Console impressions and clicks, Analytics sessions, the calls and direction requests on your Business Profile. Those are measured. The rest come from a company that asked Google the same questions a few thousand times and wrote down what came back. Those were always estimates. Right now they're thinner estimates.

Which matters more than usual, because rankings really have been moving since early September. There was an unconfirmed change around the 4th that reversed itself on the 13th, another spike on the 15th, and Google has confirmed none of it. So you've got real movement and unreliable instruments landing in the same month. Barry Schwartz, who writes about these tools every day, put it plainly: be careful looking at the data from these tools, they might be wrong.
What this means for your site
If your ranking numbers look strange this month, the tool may be wrong before your site is. The numbers that come straight from Google about your own site, Search Console especially, are the ones to lean on until the trackers catch back up.

Your move: Open Search Console, pull the last 28 days of clicks and impressions, and set it next to whatever your ranking report says. Where the two disagree, believe Search Console.
Quick Hits

The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
The Google Ads Change Most of You Can Skip
August headlines said Google Ads clicks got more expensive, but the change only bites campaigns using a bid target (Target CPA or Target ROAS) that hit their daily budget cap. Most small local businesses aren't running target-based bidding, and those who are usually see conversions get stronger along with the higher cost.
Your move: Leads still coming in at prices that make sense? Do nothing. If your cost per click spiked and leads slowed down at the same time, reply and we'll take a look.
Google Is Dropping PDFs Out of Its Index
PDFs that used to rank started falling out of Google around late August and showing up in Search Console as "Crawled, not indexed." SEO researchers tracking the pattern say the scale points to a change in Google's systems rather than anything those sites did, and some have since come back.
Your move: If a price list, menu or service sheet only exists on your site as a PDF, put that information on a real page too.
Google Is Testing an AI Blurb on Your Listing
Local SEO researchers spotted a test that puts an "AI Overview" label at the top of the local knowledge panel. One who checked the description Google wrote for his own listing found it was mostly right, with a few out-of-date claims traced back to his own website copy.
Your move: Read the About and Services pages on your site the way a stranger would, and fix anything that stopped being true.
Your Ad Account Should Be in Your Name
There's a growing case being made across the paid-search community that the business, not whoever runs the ads, should own its Google Ads account and hand out access from there. Account history feeds Google's bidding now, so losing the account means losing years of it.
Your move: Open Google Ads, go to the account access list, and check whose name sits in the owner row.
Ask Epic

"Our ranking report shows us slipping this month, but the phone hasn't changed at all. Which one should I believe?"

The phone. Every time, the phone.

Rankings are a proxy. They're a decent one most months, and they're the easiest thing to put on a chart, which is why they end up on so many reports. But nobody has ever paid an invoice with a position. What you want to know is whether people are finding you and getting in touch, and you've got better instruments for that than a ranking number.

Watch three things instead. Calls and form fills, which you can count yourself. Search Console clicks, which come from Google and measure your site instead of estimating the whole board. And whether the people who call already know what they want, which no tool reports and you can hear in about four seconds.

If those hold steady and a ranking chart wobbles, the chart is having a worse month than your business is. Especially this month.
What Epic's doing for you this week
This week we're checking rank data against Search Console on the accounts we report on, because those two have been telling different stories lately and only one of them comes from Google. We're running indexing checks on PDFs across the sites we manage. And we're pulling cost-per-click trends on the ad accounts with daily caps, to see whose numbers moved after August 17. Whatever turns up lands in your Client Center.
Your 15-minute self-audit

Read Your Own Report Like a Skeptic

Pull up your most recent marketing report and spend fifteen minutes on three questions.

1. Which numbers here came from Google about my business, and which ones did somebody estimate? Search Console, Analytics and Business Profile data are the measured ones.

2. Does the trend match what I saw at the front desk? Count calls, emails and walk-ins for the same stretch and see whether the two agree.

3. If something looks wrong, who do I ask? Write the question down and send it. A report you can't ask questions about isn't doing its job.

Thanks for reading! Got questions? Ideas? I'm all ears. Share your thoughts with me and help shape future editions of Epic Insights.

— Kristy Freeman
Epic Web Studios
k.freeman@epicwebstudios.com
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