In October 2025, Google quietly made one of the most consequential changes to search in years. It stopped supporting the results-per-page parameter that allowed users and marketers to view up to 100 organic results at once. Now, only about ten results appear per page, reshaping how visibility is measured, how small and mid-sized businesses compete, and how analytics must evolve to maintain discoverability.
For many, this update felt technical. But for growth-minded businesses, it’s seismic. Here’s why these matters, what’s really changing beneath the surface, and how analytics-driven strategy can turn this constraint into an opportunity.
Historically, search engine optimization (SEO) professionals could append &num=100 to Google Search URLs to view the top hundred results in one scroll. It was a small trick, but it revealed the long tail: those dozens of lower-ranking listings that, in aggregate, could account for meaningful traffic.
In late 2025, Google removed that capability. Search results are now capped at about ten per page, with no workaround.
The ripple effect is immediate:
This is an evolution in how Google frames relevance itself.
Google’s move aligns with its broader shift toward AI-driven semantic search. The algorithm no longer treats a “page” of results as a neutral index; instead, it aims to serve the most intent-aligned answers within the first few listings.
This means:
Google is optimizing for efficiency minimizing user friction by showing fewer but more complete results.
When visibility shrinks to ten organic slots, the cost of invisibility multiplies, and small and mid-sized firms feel it first.
Historically, SMEs benefited from the long tail ranking for niche queries, region-specific searches, or detailed informational content. That distributed traffic cushioned them against the dominance of enterprise domains.
Now, with pagination collapsed, many of those niche positions no longer register impressions. The traffic doesn’t necessarily vanish, but the visibility data does. Businesses flying blind may mistake “impression drops” for “interest drops,” cutting investment in content that still quietly drives conversions.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) like average position and impressions become unreliable across the pre- and post-change periods. Without recalibration, dashboards will show misleading declines.
Analytics leaders must now:
Large brands can absorb this change; their domain authority keeps them on page one. SMEs, meanwhile, must now win within narrower windows of attention. The new race isn’t for more keywords — it’s for more meaningful presence.
At Concord, we’ve seen this movie before. When platforms compress visibility — whether in commerce, content, or search — analytics becomes the differentiator. The organizations that win aren’t the ones publishing the most, but the ones that can see what’s driving discovery, engagement, and revenue.
Just as enterprises learned to operationalize personalization at scale — aligning experiences to user intent in real time — SMEs must now operationalize discoverability in the same way. That means treating visibility not as an outcome of content volume, but as a measurable system of:
Visibility becomes something you engineer, not something you chase.
Just as enterprises learned to operationalize personalization at scale, SMEs must now operationalize discoverability through analytics — tying every content and search initiative back to measurable customer intent and behavior.
Three focus areas define the path forward:
Don’t treat October 2025 as a performance dip. Treat it as a data regime shift.
This approach mirrors Concord’s enterprise personalization philosophy: measure what matters, not just what moves.
By recalibrating your measurement foundation first, you ensure that every optimization decision that follows is grounded in reality — not distorted visibility data.
Google’s focus on precision means that entities — people, places, brands, and products — now carry more weight than individual keywords.
To remain discoverable, SMEs must strengthen the semantic clarity and credibility of their brand.
This approach parallels the evolution we outlined in Enterprise Personalization at Scale:
when data silos disappear and AI interprets context rather than keywords; precision consistently outperforms volume.
In the compressed SERP era, clicks tell only half the story. You need visibility into how users discover you — whether through:
Modern analytics can stitch these signals together. Use event tracking, referral tagging, and social listening to map the extended discovery ecosystem — the new long tail.
The rules of discoverability have fundamentally changed. With fewer organic results and AI-driven SERPs, traditional SEO metrics like impressions and average position no longer tell the full story. Success now depends on understanding what drives engagement, where intent is emerging, and how visibility fits into the broader discovery ecosystem.
For small and mid-sized businesses, this shift may feel daunting — but it also presents an opportunity. By approaching visibility as a system rather than a single metric, organizations can better align content, analytics, and strategy to stay competitive.
At Concord, we help SMEs turn insights into action. By connecting data across search, social, and emerging AI surfaces, businesses can make decisions grounded in real behavior and maintain meaningful presence even when organic results are limited.
In the next blog, we’ll explore how to future-proof your discoverability strategy for AI-first environments, with practical steps to anticipate change, optimize visibility, and ensure your brand continues to reach the right audience.
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