Australia’s digital marketers are waking up to fresh chaos in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO). Over the past weekend, SEO specialists across the country noticed their rank-tracking tools and dashboards go haywire, with incomplete data, missing positions, and, in some cases, flat-out failures. The culprit? Google’s forced pagination.
The search giant now ignores requests for expanded listings beyond the first 10, cutting off the 100-result-per-page views that many tracking tools rely on. For local digital marketing agencies and in-house teams, Google’s forced pagination means the usual keyword tracking strategy has become suddenly unreliable, expensive and even impossible to scale.
Forced Pagination: A Costly Curveball
This isn’t a bug—it’s Google tightening the screws. With “forced pagination,†the search engine essentially tells search ranking automation tools: if you want the top 100 results, you’ll have to crawl page by page.
For agencies, that’s a major headache. What used to take one API call now takes 10, and the costs stack up fast. As SEO consultant Aleyda Solis pointed out on the platform X, what clients have come to expect—a clean, full view of rankings—is now ten times harder to deliver.
Local marketers will also recognise the wider strategy: Google is making it harder to scrape data while nudging the industry toward user-first metrics. But that doesn’t help when you’re preparing a monthly report and the positions your clients pay for have vanished.
Updates on Top of Updates
This technical shake-up lands on top of an already volatile year for Aussie websites. The August 2025 Spam Update triggered noticeable traffic drops for businesses in retail, professional services, and e-commerce. Then came September’s Core Algorithm Update, which reshuffled rankings overnight.
Without reliable tracking, agencies are left with blurred visibility. They can’t send clients reports if the data’s this patchy—it undermines trust, even if it’s Google’s doing.
What It Means for Strategy Down Under
For Australian businesses leaning heavily on organic search, the risk is obvious: keyword optimisation becomes guesswork, and campaigns can waste budget chasing phantom positions.
Even fallback metrics aren’t immune. Google Search Console impressions, often used to fill the gaps, are now skewed. Some in the industry, like Search Engine Land, have even suggested rank tracking might be “dead†and that marketers should double down on engagement metrics like CTR, conversions, and revenue impact. But with impressions themselves being “weeded out,†even those signals aren’t fully reliable.
How Aussie Marketers Can Respond
So, what’s the play?
- Blend automation with manual checks: Don’t rely entirely on dashboards—spot-check results in real time, especially for top-value keywords.
- Prepare clients for rising costs: Expect SEMrush, Ahrefs and similar tools to push up pricing as scraping gets more resource-intensive.
- Shift the conversation: Focus less on rankings and more on outcomes—traffic quality, conversions, and the role SEO plays in the full marketing mix.
- Stay calm: As Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land has pointed out, Google isn’t reporting outages. This is a deliberate shift, not a system failure.
The Bigger Picture
This could be the start of a broader shake-up. With AI overviews and personalised results on the horizon, position tracking may fade into history. By 2026, the industry might be measuring success less on “position 1†bragging rights and more on whether SEO and other digital marketing campaigns actually drive growth.
For Australian agencies, this change is both a challenge and an opportunity. Yes, client reporting will get tougher. But those who adapt—by reframing value around conversions, engagement, and brand visibility—will be better placed to weather the storm.
Final Word
Google’s forced pagination change is a reminder that SEO is never a set-and-forget strategy. It’s a moving target. For digital marketers from Sydney to Brisbane, Melbourne to Perth, the message is simple: be agile, keep educating your clients, and don’t let rankings alone dictate success.
Want to learn more about how these recent changes can affect your specific SEO campaign? Get in touch with us today. We can help steer you in the right direction.
