Is google limiting search impressions?

[borishar]

I find this a bit weird, but for the past month or so I am seeing an exact amount of max impressions on business days.

That's a bit odd that the exact number of impressions I am seeing is never more than 2500 impressions, per webmasters tools.

Look at the pic. Are these numbers approximate, or google is putting manual max search impressions on websites when they didn't reach a certain level of popularity ?

[czoom]

Who knows. Google has been acting crazy lately. Anythings possible.

[joshz]

GWT is not as accurate as GA. Google does not limit your traffic. Use Google Analytics for more accurate search numbers.

[borishar]

GWT is not as accurate as GA. Google does not limit your traffic. Use Google Analytics for more accurate search numbers.

I have GA installed, but the question was about search impressions and not clicks. GA doesn't show search impressions only shows clicks, or maybe I don't know something about GA.

[realityhack]

Because Google is not trying to be precise with Webmaster Tools, they may be doing some rounding. It looks like that is the case with my account and your graph seems similar. I think you will find all the points (not just peaks) are round numbers.

Google has every incentive to provide good search results and absolutely no incentive to limit impressions for a certain site.

Start thinking about how this might happen without Google being the bad guy from a 9-11 conspiracy theory.

[Test-ok]

Boris
Give statcounter a try, it's not free but I think it's a much better product than the free google crap offered. That's just my opinion, many site owners and pretty much every webmaster have this love relationship with Google and sucks up what ever freebies google offers and install it on their site. Which raises my red flag.
Yea I know I'm the less than 1 percent who thinks like that.

[borishar]

Because Google is not trying to be precise with Webmaster Tools, they may be doing some rounding. It looks like that is the case with my account and your graph seems similar. I think you will find all the points (not just peaks) are round numbers.

Google has every incentive to provide good search results and absolutely no incentive to limit impressions for a certain site.

Start thinking about how this might happen without Google being the bad guy from a 9-11 conspiracy theory.

I get it .. But still weird how it is always rounding up to 2500 ... never 2600 or 3000 ... always 2500.. anyways.. i'll keep monitoring it.

[realityhack]

I get it .. But still weird how it is always rounding up to 2500 ... never 2600 or 3000 ... always 2500.. anyways.. i'll keep monitoring it.

From your graph it is only rounding to 2500 on peak days. It rounds to lower numbers regularly.
Seeing as we do not know if the next interval is say 3000 vs 2600 your peak days during this short sample period could easily all fall in the range that rounds to 2500. It could also be a semi-logarithmic scale so the next rounding point could even be 5000.

I am guessing your site is simply only showing up on a that small a number of searches.

I would use the number not as an absolute but the way Webmetrics are supposed to be used... as a trend. Look month to month, quarter to quarter, or even year to year depending upon your businesses seasonality etc. Ignore the specific numbers and see if the numbers are going up or down.

[AlexD]

GWT is not as accurate as GA. Google does not limit your traffic.

Who knows ...