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Use case · SEO · facts as of October 2026

Proxies for SERP and rank tracking in 2026: what still works

Rank tracking changed more in the last year than in the ten before it. This page sets out what Google's own rules say, what courts have done, and where location-accurate residential IPs are still the right tool.

Last updated: · 6 min read

Quick answer

What is the best proxy for SERP and rank tracking in 2026?

For checking what a search page shows in a given city, use residential proxies with city targeting and a sticky session per check, at a human pace. CrawlRelay sells them at $1.50 for 1 GB and $0.50/GB from 50 GB; city availability varies. For large-scale Google rank tracking, note that Google's robots.txt disallows /search, two lawsuits over SERP scraping are open, and since about 11 September 2026 rank-tracking vendors have reported wide blocks on major residential proxy networks. No KYC. Pay in crypto.

SERP tracking in 2026: the facts that changed

Google robots.txtDisallow: /search and Disallow: /goto? for all user agents (checked 2026-10-13)
JavaScriptRequired for Google Search since January 2025
num=100Stopped working around 10–14 September 2025: 100 results now take 10 requests
/goto redirectsResult links go through a server-side redirect since late July–August 2026
BlockingWide blocks on major residential proxy networks and altered results reported since about 11 September 2026
LawsuitsGoogle v. SerpApi (first dismissal July 2026, amended complaint pending); Reddit v. SerpApi, Oxylabs, Perplexity and AWMProxy (SerpApi's and Perplexity's motions to dismiss largely denied 31 July 2026; Oxylabs' motion pending)

What do Google's own rules say about automated searches?

Google's robots.txt, read on 13 October 2026, applies to every user agent and contains Disallow: /search, with exceptions only for its About and How Search Works pages, and Disallow: /goto?. Robots.txt is the standard, RFC 9309 since 2022, by which a site says what automated clients may fetch.

CrawlRelay's Acceptable Use Policy asks customers to respect robots.txt. We therefore do not market our proxies for automated, large-scale collection of Google search result pages. Proxies remain useful for SEO in the ways described below.

What happened to rank tracking between 2025 and 2026?

  • January 2025: Google started requiring JavaScript for Search, saying fewer than 0.1% of searches came from users with JavaScript disabled. Plain HTTP fetching of result pages stopped working.
  • September 2025: the num=100 parameter stopped working, so collecting 100 results takes 10 requests instead of one. A Search Engine Land analysis of 319 sites found that 87.7% lost Search Console impressions afterwards.
  • July–August 2026: Google routed result links through a server-side /goto redirect, rolled out to nearly all US residential IPs by late August. Nozzle estimated 500 to 1,000 HTTP requests per five-page rank check.
  • Since about 11 September 2026: rank-tracking vendors reported wide IP blocks aimed at major residential proxy networks, more CAPTCHAs and altered results: Nozzle measured 8.0% of result pages affected, DemandSphere about 11%. Google has not commented on those reports; on the redirects it said it has "a long history of deploying technical measures against evolving forms of abuse".

Which lawsuits matter for SERP scraping?

Both are open, and both rest on allegations about circumventing Google's anti-bot system, SearchGuard, under section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

  • Google v. SerpApi (N.D. Cal., filed 19 December 2025). On 20 July 2026 the court granted SerpApi's motion to dismiss; claims about results without copyrighted content were dismissed without leave to amend. Google filed an amended complaint on 10 August 2026, and SerpApi asked again for dismissal on 24 August. No ruling on that second motion was public on 13 October 2026.
  • Reddit v. SerpApi, Oxylabs, AWMProxy and Perplexity (S.D.N.Y., filed 22 October 2025). On 31 July 2026 the court largely denied SerpApi's and Perplexity's motions to dismiss: Reddit's allegations of circumvention under DMCA §1201 and civil conspiracy proceed against them. Oxylabs' motion was still pending in October 2026. No defendant has been found liable.

None of this is a final judgment, and this is not legal advice. The direction is clear enough for planning: automated access to search results is contested in court and resisted technically.

Where do residential proxies still help SEO teams?

  • Location-accurate spot checks. An SEO checking, by hand or in a browser, what a handful of queries show in Chicago, Lyon or Osaka needs an exit in that city. Use -country- and -city- with a sticky session per check, at a human pace; city availability varies.
  • Your own pages, from everywhere. Check redirects, hreflang, geo-blocking, local prices and consent banners on your own sites from the countries you target.
  • Ad landing pages. Verify that the page behind an ad loads correctly and shows the right offer in each market.
  • Sites that allow it. Marketplaces, directories and smaller search engines publish their own robots.txt and terms; follow them per site.

For ranking data at scale, use first-party data where you can, such as Search Console for your own sites, or a provider that licenses the data and states how it collects it.

Python: check your own page from three cities (sticky session per city)
import uuid

import requests

GATEWAY = "gw.crawlrelay.com:7777"
CHECKS = [("us", "chicago"), ("fr", "lyon"), ("jp", "osaka")]
PAGE = "https://www.example.com/pricing"  # your own page

for country, city in CHECKS:
    user = "USERNAME-country-%s-city-%s-session-%s-ttl-5" % (country, city, uuid.uuid4().hex[:8])
    proxy = "http://%s:PASSWORD@%s" % (user, GATEWAY)
    r = requests.get(PAGE, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=(10, 30),
                     headers={"Accept-Language": "en;q=0.5"}, allow_redirects=True)
    print(country, city, r.status_code, r.url, len(r.content), "bytes")

Residential or mobile IPs for search checks?

Residential for desktop results by city: home connections carry precise locations, and CrawlRelay supports city targeting, plus state and ZIP code in the United States and ASN targeting at no extra cost. Rotating mobile IPs for checks of what phone users see, from $1.50/GB (from 5 GB). Neither type makes automated collection of Google result pages compatible with Google's robots.txt; they make location-accurate checks possible.

SERP tracking proxies: questions

It is contested. Google's robots.txt disallows /search for every user agent, and two US lawsuits over SERP scraping were open in October 2026: Google v. SerpApi, where a first dismissal was followed by an amended complaint, and Reddit v. SerpApi and others, where on 31 July 2026 the court largely denied SerpApi's and Perplexity's motions to dismiss; Oxylabs' motion was still pending. No defendant has been found liable. This is not legal advice; read our 2026 overview.

Why did my rank tracker break in September 2026?

Rank-tracking vendors reported that from about 11 September 2026 Google applied wide IP blocks to major residential proxy networks, showed more CAPTCHAs and returned altered results to suspected bots. Earlier changes, the end of num=100 in September 2025 and /goto redirects in summer 2026, had already multiplied the requests each check needs.

Can residential proxies get past Google's blocks?

We do not sell them for that. Google's robots.txt disallows automated access to its result pages, and pushing past its technical measures is at the heart of the current lawsuits. Use residential IPs for location-accurate checks at a human pace, for your own pages and for sites whose rules allow automated access.

How do I see local results for a city without a proxy?

For your own site, Search Console reports queries and positions by country. For a quick look at another city, some browsers and SEO tools let you set a location for a manual search. A city-targeted residential exit gives the most faithful view of what a local visitor gets, including local ads and map results; city availability varies.

Sources (9)
  1. google.com robots.txt — Google (2026-10-13)
  2. Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search — TechCrunch (2025-01-17)
  3. Google num=100 impact data — Search Engine Land (2025-09)
  4. Google's goto redirect — SUSO Digital (2026-09-25)
  5. Third-party Google rank tracking broken — Search Engine Roundtable (2026-10-12)
  6. Google returns wrong results on 11% of DemandSphere's daily rank checks — PPC Land (2026-10-13)
  7. Google v. SerpApi: the court granted our motion to dismiss — SerpApi (2026-07-21)
  8. SerpApi asks judge to end Google's scraping case — PPC Land (2026-08-25)
  9. Reddit v. SerpApi LLC — Loeb & Loeb (2026-08)

City-accurate checks of your own pages

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