Semrush, one of the biggest rank-tracking vendors and absent from our earlier roundup of tool makers’ responses, has publicly confirmed that Google is feeding misleading pages to its collection systems. Search Engine Land covered the update Oct. 28.
Semrush uses the word “poisoned” for these pages and calls the problem industry-wide. Its example: a Brazilian query for one particular pram product surfaced a page from a dentistry equipment seller, since the two share the Portuguese word “carrinho.” It says its systems exclude clearly invalid results, that it changed data sources, and that new checks flag doubtful results for recollection.
Semrush attributes the likely cause to efforts to curb bulk scraping for AI, citing industry discussion, and notes Google has not commented. The statement gives no share of affected results, no dates, and no word on whether stored history was corrected. Anyone relying on Semrush rankings for late-fall reporting should check unexplained movements against Search Console and send the company the domain and keywords involved.
Based on Semrush’s blog post “Poisoned SERPs: An update on Google ranking data in Semrush,” covered by Search Engine Land on Oct. 28, 2026.
