Google's December 2025 core update is now done rolling out, it took 18 days and 2 hours to complete. The core update started on December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET and ended on December 29, 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET. Google posted saying, "Google December 2025 core update rollout is now complete."
This was the third core update of the year, but we are expecting more core updates, more often, this year we only had three. I was beginning to think we wouldn't get a core update again this year and maybe in the future - like Google would not confirm them in the future. I mean, Google did promise us more core updates, more often and that didn't happen but hey, we at least got Google to confirm this one. Google did tell us more core updates will come and it did.
We previously had the June 2025 core update and then before that the March 2025 core update, and more recently the August 2025 spam update.
Google December 2025 Core Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google December 2025 Broad Core Update
- Launched: December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET
- Completed: December 29 2025 at around 2:05 pm ET
- Targets: It looks at all types of content
- Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
- Impact: The normal core update - updating some of the "core systems". Google said this December update is a "regular update."
- Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.
Google December 2025 Core Update Details
Google said this update will take about three weeks to roll out and "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."
That is all good said on this update.
Google December 2025 Core Update Volatility
The volatility was weird with this one. We had Google announce the December 2025 core update on December 11th, then a couple of days later, we saw intense volatility around December 13th and then things calmed significantly. It then spiked up again and got super volatile on December 20th - both on Saturdays. Then again, it cooled significantly both in terms of SEO industry chatter and the third-party tracking tools.
I did ask John Muller from Google on Sunday, December 28th, if it was already done because the volatility was unusually calm. John replied to me on Blueskye, "It's possible, I'll ask tomorrow. Usually folks watch out more for the starting time than the finishing time."
Video Summary
Here is a video summary I made on this Google December 2025 core update:
Google Tracking Tools On December 2025 Core Update
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter on the December 2025 Core Update
It was just announced, so I will add more to this as the day goes on. Here are some of the chatter from this morning on this site and WebmasterWorld:
The chatter has been unusually calm over the past few several days. We had a lot of chatter related to the volatility around December 13th and December 20th. So you can read those. I will add more here when I see it.
To be honest my genuine traffic has been where I would have expected it to be however checking various Serps G's penchant for extremely similar, thin content single image pages are back in vogue!The last couple of days every site has been hit by a Lithuanian bot, some sites up to four times, and each time every site was hit for 1,140 pages.
Just what is the significance of 1,140? Answers on a postcard to ... :-)
Well... I lost over 90% of my traffic during this core update, impressions tanked, I was wiped from Discover, wiped from New,s and wiped from Search, clicks are abysmal and remain at their lowest since the site's conception, all coming after years of steady growth, slashed in a matter of hours, 1,000 active users to 10, 5 of them bots from China now. Sincerely hope it returns, but wouldn't be holding out hope. This is one tough gig, I'll tell you that. You always know the day is coming, given everyone else's recent experiences, but you always hold out hope you'll survive just one more core update. Hope everyone else made it through.
I could tell it was done, the day Conversions returned, which was exactly the day after Christmas. Traffic is absolutely terrible still, but at least sales are coming in.
Previous Broad Core Updates
Here is a list of the most recent core updates we've seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously, we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.
- December 2025 Core Update: December 11, 2025 through December 29, 2025
- June 2025 Core Update: June 30, 2025 through July 17, 2025
- March 2025 Core Update: March 13, 2025 through March 27, 2025
- December 2024 Core Update: December 12, 2024 through December 18, 2024
- November 2024 Core update: November 11, 2024 through December 5, 2024
- August 2024 Core Update : August 15, 2024 through September 3, 2024
- March 2024 Core Update : March 5, 2024 through April 19, 2024
- November 2023 Core Update : November 2, 2023 through November 28, 2023
- October 2023 Core Update: October 5, 2023 through October 19, 2023
- August 2023 Core Update: August 22, 2023 through September 7, 2023
- March 2023 Core Update: March 15, 2023 through March 28, 2023
- September 2022 Core Update: September 12, 2022 through September 26, 2022
- May 2022 Core Update: May 25, 2022 through June 9, 2022
- November 2021 Core Update: November 17, 2021 through November 30, 2021
- July 2021 Core Update: July 1, 2021 through July 12, 2021
- June 2021 Core Update: June 2, 2021 through June 12, 2021
- December 2020 Core Update: December 3, 2020 through December 16, 2020
- May 2020 Core Update: May 4, 2020 through May 18, 2020
- January 2020 Core Update: January 13, 2020 through mostly January 17, 2020
- September 2019 Core Update: September 24, 2019
- Google June 2019 Core Update: June 3, 2019 through June 8, 2019
Previous Helpful Content Update Impact
Here is the list of the previous Google helpful content updates:
- Septemebr 14, 2023 - September 2023 Google helpful content update - completing on Septmeber 28, 2023
- December 5, 2022 - December 2022 Google helpful content update, completing on January 12, 2023
- August 25, 2022 - August 2022 (original) Google helpful content update, completing on September 9, 2022
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