Over the weekend, Google completely nuked the entire industry’s ability to track SERP positions by removing the num=100 parameter.  

If you haven't heard the reactions, I'll give you a quick run-down. Google decided to disable the &num=100 parameter in its search URL.

It seems bland and unremarkable, right? No, this completely disrupts tools and SEO workflows that relied on pulling up to 100 search results per page.

So now this has torpedoed people's ability to make decisions on SEO data they rely on.

Quick Background on the Parameter

For years, &num=100 was a popular hack among SEO professionals, researchers, and developers to fetch more results at once—saving time on manual scrolling or pagination.

You'd simply append it to a search query, like: https://www.google.com/search?q=example&num=100. This was especially useful for:

  • Analyzing search engine results pages (SERPs) for keyword research.
  • Building or testing SEO tools that scrape or track rankings.
  • Quick overviews without clicking through multiple pages.

And even if you never used it yourself, you benefitted from it. Tools across our industry like SpyFu, Ahrefs, and Semrush, use Top 100 results to illustrate SEO growth, signal new movement in a topic, and give context to overall domain authority.

And Then it Was Gone

We heard from our partner that this change made data retrieval exponentially more costly to deliver.

It's almost prohibitively expensive.

So it's no surprise that others reacted, but it's a disappointment that they are pretty much rolling over.

In essence, Semrush and Ahrefs are abandoning everything beyond position 20 and trying to convince everyone it doesn’t matter.

At SpyFu, we’re not doing that.

This reminds of the "not provided" shift 4 years ago. SEOs and Google Ads managers were making strategic decisions on that exact data. It was just gone, and some hand-waving powers told everyone to just deal with it.

And again, right now, people rely on Top 100 data. So we’re still delivering it.

But this hits hard - delivering is very expensive.

We might even lose money trying to do this… but we’re going to try anyway.

I wish that was the end of the announcement, but I've crunched the numbers. If we do this alone, it’s not sustainable.  We need your help.

This isn't about SpyFu vs. them. 

If we can do it - the way the ecosystem works - all your favorite tools will be able to do it.  If nothing else, then by using our API (which has 100% of our keyword and ranking data).

If we fail, I think it’ll be gone forever.  Those are the stakes.

But, together - it is a solvable problem.  We CAN do it.

Here’s the plan:

I need you to vote with your dollars.

Sign up for a SpyFu account. And if you’re an existing customer, upgrade.

Every additional dollar pays for that Top 100 data.

I know this sounds convenient, and cynics will call it a money grab, but if you know of a better way, I'm open to hear it. But this is what's in my power to continue to deliver Top 100 data if we all do a part.

So I'm asking you to pitch in by signing up, upgrading, or – if you can't do either of those – spread the word.

Not just because SpyFu is a great tool with the best data, and the only platform natively integrated into ChatGPT (those things are true)

I am asking you to do it to keep the Top 100 Alive for the entire SEO community. 

We’ll use every bit of the additional revenue to keep getting the Top 100.  I promise.

Before SpyFu, there was no Semrush, no Ahrefs - nobody.  The whole keyword rank tracking / competitive keyword industry is my original invention.  I’ve been doing this for like 19 years.

This isn’t about money for me.  It’s personal.  It’s about pulling together and helping the community of marketers in a time of incredible uncertainty even without this.

It’s about fighting back.

Will you join the fight?

By the way, I'm curious what you think. If you want to talk about it, come chat on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.