Changelog
Contract changes, newest first. A change is listed here when a field's meaning, presence or type changes for callers, or when the field reference described one wrongly; additions that only fill in a previously empty field are not.
2026-09-04
items[] used to return {type, rank} only for every item type except organic. Eight types now carry full fields: organic, paid, related_searches, people_also_ask, ai_overview, knowledge_graph, local_pack, video. The field tables on the /v1/search endpoint page list exactly what each type carries.
items[].sitelinks[].type is removed. It was always the constant "link"; a caller reading that key now gets nothing back.
organic and paid items gained highlighted_words -- the query terms the engine bolded in the snippet, as an array of strings.
serp_url and items[].description now return null instead of "" when the value is absent. A caller checking is not None on either field was previously told a value existed when it did not.
featured_snippet, images, top_stories and shopping items still return {type, rank} only; they are not yet published as full objects.
rank on /v1/search items, /v1/serp/history points and /v1/domains/gap ranks now means the position among results of the same type -- the organic rank on organic results. It counted every block the page carried -- ads and SERP features included -- ahead of organic results, so an AI overview above your first organic result made it rank 3. Single-instance blocks (AI overview, featured snippet, People Also Ask) are always rank 1.
/v1/serp/history best_rank counts organic points only.
The "A rank tracker in a cron job", "Let an LLM pick what to optimize next" and "Track page performance over time" recipes now filter on type == "organic"; copy the updated snippets if you built on the old ones.
Field reference corrections on /v1/search: total_results can be null or 0; items[].price is {amount, currency, displayed}; items[].date is display text, not an ISO date.
featured_snippet stops appearing in result_types on search results pages that show a knowledge panel. It was being reported there for a knowledge panel fact row and for an expanded People Also Ask answer, and neither one is a featured snippet.