On July 20, 2026, a federal court dismissed the core of Google's lawsuit against SerpApi, and that decision gives plain, text-based Google Search data a stronger legal footing under the DMCA. If you run rank tracking, keyword research, or PPC monitoring, this is the ruling that decides how much risk sits behind the data you collect. The short version is that text got safer and images stayed risky.
What the Court Actually Decided
The court drew a hard line. A DMCA anti-circumvention claim has to point to copyrighted material, not to public search index data. That single rule drove the outcome across every claim the court decided.
The case turned on the difference between what Google displays as public index information and what might still count as protected content. That split matters if you collect, process, or store SERP data for any reason.
- Plain search results won cleanly. Organic rankings, page titles, URLs, and text snippets were treated as factual index data, not copyrighted works, so the court dismissed those DMCA claims with prejudice.
- Image and licensed features stayed open. Claims tied to image-based and licensed SERP features were dismissed with leave to amend, which gives Google a narrow chance to replead.
- The ruling settled less than it looks. It does not decide Terms of Service, the CFAA, privacy rules, or protected media reuse.
Think of it this way. A ranking position or a URL is closer to a record of what appears in Google's index than to a protected work of authorship. That distinction did most of the legal work here.
Lower-Risk Data Versus Higher-Risk Data
The practical question is simple. Which parts of a search result can go into your reports without adding extra risk, and which parts still need a closer look? Use this split as your working rule.
| SERP data type | Lower DMCA risk after ruling | Needs caution |
|---|---|---|
| Organic rankings and URLs | Yes | No |
| Meta titles and snippets | Yes | No |
| Ad headlines and text | Yes | No |
| Image thumbnails | No | Yes |
| Licensed or rich media | No | Yes |
| Cached page content | No | Yes |
Treat rank positions, URLs, titles, snippets, and ad copy as the lower-risk bucket. Treat image thumbnails, rich results with licensed assets, and cached page content as the higher-risk bucket.
What This Means for SEO and PPC Work
This changes day-to-day work, not just legal exposure. Text-based SERP collection now stands on firmer ground, so automated rank tracking, competitor ad monitoring, and keyword research that pull organic positions, titles, snippets, URLs, and ad copy sit in a better DMCA spot than they did before.
The workflows that still call for caution are the ones that pull image thumbnails, rich media, or licensed content out of Google results. That part of the ruling was not settled, so those features stay in a gray area.
For a small or midsize business, this shows up in plain ways. Take a local service company tracking where it appears in Google search results. Pulling the ranking position and the visible listing text is the kind of text-based observation the court treated as lower-risk, and that is a routine part of local SEO reporting.
Accuracy Is Still a Separate Problem
This ruling does not fix data quality, and you should not read it as if it does. Search volume estimates across major tools can differ by 20% to 40% for the same keyword. About 15% of daily Google queries have never appeared in any keyword research tool's index. So the data got legally safer to use, but it did not get more accurate.
There is also a shrinking window to watch. Granular performance data older than 37 months keeps getting trimmed across Google's APIs, including the Google Ads API and the Google Analytics Data API. If you need older daily, weekly, or hourly data, move it into your own warehouse before Google cuts it, because once it is gone it does not come back.
Guardrails to Put in Place Now
The court drew its line based on data type, so your next move is to tighten collection around that same line. The cleanest internal rule is short: collect text fields, exclude media.
- For reporting and audits, stick to factual SERP elements like headlines, display URLs, snippets, and keyword positions. Stay away from screenshots, image thumbnails, and map tiles.
- For product and engineering, build pipelines that capture text fields and leave out images and map tiles, and log each record's source and downstream use so every stored record traces back to the text-only rule.
- For validation, check SERP data against your own first-party signals from Search Console and Google Ads, and set a regular legal review for any workflow that touches search results data.
In Google Ads management and training, this means you can review headlines, display URLs, snippets, and ad positions to guide bidding and messaging without storing screenshots or licensed imagery. If you want help building reporting that stays on the right side of this line, our Google Ads management services team does exactly that, and you can always reach out through our contact page with questions.
The Bottom Line
The SerpApi decision gives you a stronger basis for collecting public, text-based SERP data like rank positions, headlines, snippets, and ad copy for rank tracking, keyword research, and PPC monitoring. It does not clear image thumbnails, licensed media, or cached content, and it does not touch Terms of Service, the CFAA, or privacy law.
So keep your collection limited to text fields, validate everything against first-party data, and treat richer SERP elements as higher-risk until a court says otherwise. Collect public text data with care, and leave the media alone.
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