If your Google Search Console impressions looked unusually high over the past year, and your click-through rate seemed strangely low, you weren’t imagining things. And you weren’t doing anything wrong.
Google recently confirmed that a logging error had been inflating impression counts in Search Console’s Performance report since May 13, 2025. That’s nearly 11 months of inaccurate data, quietly skewing one of the most widely used metrics in digital marketing. The fix is underway, and many practices are already noticing their impression numbers dropping as the corrected data takes hold.
Here’s what happened, what it means for you, and (more importantly) why the practices focused on the right things are coming out of this just fine.
What Happened?
Google’s Search Console Performance report shows how often your website appeared in search results (impressions), how often people clicked through (clicks), and the resulting click-through rate (CTR). For nearly a year, the impressions figure was being significantly over-reported due to a logging error.
Google disclosed this on April 3, 2026, but the announcement was easy to miss. There was no blog post, no email to webmasters, and no flag inside Search Console itself. The disclosure consisted of a brief update to an obscure help page. That was it.
The practical fallout: any impression-based trend from May 2025 onward needs to be treated with caution.
CTR figures from that period are also unreliable, since CTR is calculated directly from impressions.
Year-over-year comparisons are compromised. And the widely-discussed “declining CTR” narrative that many in the SEO industry spent months analyzing? It may have been substantially distorted by inflated data the entire time.
What Chiropractors Were Told to Worry About (That Wasn’t the Real Story)
Throughout 2025, many marketing reports pointed to a troubling trend: impressions were climbing while clicks stayed flat. Some practices questioned whether SEO was still worth investing in. Others started second-guessing strategies that were, by every other measure, working.
Now we know the impression numbers driving that narrative were wrong. The denominator in every CTR calculation was inflated for the better part of a year.
The practices that stayed focused on actual patient inquiries (phone calls, new patient forms, booked appointments) weren’t caught off guard by any of this. Because those are the numbers that actually run a practice.
Metrics Are a Means to an End. New Patients Are the End.
This is a good moment to zoom out.
Search Console data is useful. Knowing how your site performs in Google’s index helps inform strategy, spot technical issues, and track progress over time. We pay attention to it, and you should too. But there’s a number that matters more than any of them.
New patients.
Not impressions. Not rankings. Not a dashboard full of green arrows. The only metric that truly moves your practice forward is whether the right people are finding you, trusting you, and booking an appointment.
“Our experience with Perfect Patients has been the best. If you are in the market for a new website, I’d highly recommend Perfect Patients.”
— Dr. Kim Stetzel
We’ve seen it happen thousands of times. Perfect Patients has helped deliver over 2 million new patients to chiropractors worldwide. When the strategy is right, the results show up where it counts: in your schedule.
And Then There’s AI Search
The impressions bug isn’t the only shift worth paying attention to. Search itself is changing in a bigger way.
More and more patients are starting their healthcare journey not with a Google query, but with a question typed into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok. “Who’s a good chiropractor near me?” “What helps with chronic back pain?” These conversations are happening right now, and they’re producing recommendations. Specific ones. With practice names attached.
If yours isn’t one of them, you’re invisible to a growing segment of motivated, ready-to-book patients. This is not a future concern. It’s a present one.
“Our organic ranking and website traffic have both increased, and we are seeing more new patients than ever.”
— Dr. Shara Posner, Back to Health Center
That kind of momentum comes from showing up everywhere patients are searching, including the AI platforms they’re increasingly turning to first. At Perfect Patients, we’ve built tools specifically designed to get your practice found in AI search, not just on Google. Being visible across every platform patients use is how practices keep growing, no matter how the measurement landscape shifts.
Pro Tip: Don’t Let Metric Noise Distract You From What’s Working
When the data gets noisy (whether it’s a reporting bug, an algorithm update, or a platform change), the practices that stay grounded are the ones tracking what actually reflects patient growth. Calls. Form submissions. New patient numbers. Those don’t lie.
Your Phone Should Be Ringing. Let’s Make Sure It Is.
The Google Search Console bug is a useful reminder: dashboards shift, platforms evolve, and reporting tools aren’t always telling the full story. What doesn’t change is whether new patients are choosing your practice.
At Perfect Patients, our focus has always been on that outcome, not just the metrics around it. We build websites that convert, strategies that attract, and with AI search optimization, visibility in the places patients are turning to first.
If you’re ready to stop watching numbers and start seeing results, let’s talk. A free Discovery Call takes 15 minutes and could change the trajectory of your practice.