Developing
Vendor-reported figures with undisclosed methods; Google has not confirmed either rate.
In 60 seconds
- Ray Grieselhuber, CEO of DemandSphere, said about 11% of daily SERPs contained spurious results (October 7 post); Nozzle measured 8.0% poisoned results pages.
- Blocking intensified from about September 11, according to DemandSphere's posts.
- Google's goto redirects, confirmed August 26, cost 500 to 1,000 requests per five-page ranking (Nozzle).
- Branded AI Overview presence in DemandSphere's data rose from 26.12% on September 1 to 82.06% on September 29.
Impact Layer
- What changed
- Rank tracking vendors say Google is making it harder to collect accurate SERP data.
- Why it matters
- Rank reports drive client decisions, and a few per cent of wrong results can distort trends.
- Who is affected
- SEOs, agencies and rank-tracking tool users.
- Martech stack area
- Analytics, SEO & Search
- Stack impact
- Cross-check rank-tracker trends against Search Console, and ask vendors how they detect and filter poisoned results.
- Business impact
- Moderate Vendor claims reported by PPC Land. Methods, keyword sets and AI Overview counting differ between vendors, the September 11 start date appears only in DemandSphere's posts, and one-day AI Overview spikes are unexplained.
- Related vendors
- What to watch
- A Google statement and vendor methodology disclosures.
PPC Land reported on October 13, 2026 that Ray Grieselhuber, CEO of rank-tracking vendor DemandSphere, linked five of its posts on LinkedIn on October 12. Other vendors cited include Nozzle, SISTRIX, SerpApi and Ranktracker.
Vendor-reported figures
- Spurious Google results on about 11% of DemandSphere’s daily SERPs (October 7 post); Nozzle measured 8.0% poisoned results pages.
- Blocking intensified from about September 11, per DemandSphere.
- Google’s goto redirects, confirmed August 26, cost 500 to 1,000 requests per five-page ranking (Nozzle).
- Branded AI Overview presence in DemandSphere’s data rose from 26.12% (September 1) to 82.06% (September 29), peaking at 90.48% on September 27.
- Google’s September spam update ran September 24 to October 8, overlapping the disruption.
Quotes
Grieselhuber on September 24: “Google does not want the AI labs to use their SERPs as part of their live retrieval process to answer questions,” and “the blocking operation is still ongoing as of this writing.”
Not stated
Google has not confirmed either error rate. DemandSphere did not explain how it measured the 11%, and it has not disclosed its countermeasures. None of the sources measured clicks on branded AI Overviews.
Our read
If your rank charts moved suddenly in late September, consider tracker noise before concluding anything about your site.
Sources
- PPC Land: Google returns wrong results on 11% of DemandSphere's daily rank checks (opens in a new tab)
Source for the vendor figures, quotes, context and gaps.