Google vs. SEO tools: Why your SEO data might be missing

Google apparently made a significant change to its system in the last 48 hours that is impacting multiple SEO tools. The change appears to have blocked many scrapers and APIs, resulting in a data blackout.

Data lags are being reported by users of SEO tools including SimilarWeb, Rank Ranger, SE Ranking, ZipTie.dev, AlsoAsked and possibly others.

What happened. Shay Harel, senior director of SimilarWeb, a web analytics and market intelligence platform, shared a statement detailing what happened with Barry Schwartz:

On the night of January 15th, Google implemented significant changes to how its systems handle automated interactions. These updates temporarily disrupted rank tracking and SERP data solutions across the industry, including ours, as many existing configurations were rendered non-functional.

The changes introduced new requirements for interaction protocols, invalidating previously reliable methods and causing widespread service interruptions. At Similarweb, we rapidly adapted by identifying the root cause and deploying updates within 18 hours to restore full functionality.

This update also deprecated certain configurations, such as ads_mode: ON, which was commonly used for analyzing paid results. The shift to requiring more dynamic session handling adds complexity and raises concerns about potential depersonalization of results. These changes highlight Google’s ongoing efforts to refine its ecosystem and introduce stricter controls.

The scale of this event was unprecedented, even compared to major disruptions in 2018. It reinforces the importance of technical agility and innovation in delivering reliable data solutions for the SEO industry.

Tomek Rudzki, co-founder of ZipTie.dev, a Google AI Overviews tracking tool, also confirmed the issue on X:

• “We’ve observed a decrease (approximately 2 percentage points) in AIO detection rates through Ziptie’s tracking system. It seems Google is blocking AIO checkers in a smart way, far beyond traditional captchas. We are looking for ways to improve the AIO detection rate.”

Why we care. You likely rely on some of these tools to understand whether your SEO efforts are successful – whether your goal are helping to drive visibility, conversions, revenue for your brands and websites. Without data, we are blind. So check your tools to see if you are impacted. Hopefully it will just be temporary if you are.

Some tools unaffected. Some SEO tools seem to be unaffected by Google’s change, such as Semrush (disclosure: Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush), Sistrix, Monitorank, and Ahrefs.

Story developing. We are reaching out to SEO tool providers and will update this story with any more news and reactions as we get them.

First spotted. Eric Mercier published appears to be the first to have spotted this issue and published this article (in Spanish) Google bloqueó las herramientas SEO: el drama del 2025. I discovered his article via Natalia Witczyk’s LinkedIn post.

Editor’s note. Originally, Semrush was listed as a company that was impacted by this data outage, based on social media posts. However, a Semrush spokesperson told me:

• “On any given day, some users may encounter bugs as part of the normal course of business, but nothing unusual has been identified. Our product team has verified this, and we aren’t seeing any widespread issues.”