As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it seemed to cool a bit towards the middle of the week. Now, I am seeing signs of more intense volatility hit on Saturday, December 20th.
As a reminder, Google officially announced this core update on December 11th at around 12:25 pm ET. Google said this update will take up to three weeks to roll out. Google also said, this update "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites." Generally, but not always, we start to see ranking movement from these updates a day or two after it is announced and this update seems to show that. Then generally, we see another big shift with these updates a week or two into the update. Then we may see smaller or sometimes even bigger shuffled throughout and even after the core update was announced done - maybe smaller core updates and adjustments.
I believe we might be seeing the final wave of volatility for this update now, but I can be wrong - I am wrong a lot.
So, what are we seeing with the Google December 2025 core update?
Google Tracking Tools On December 2025 Core Update
Let's start with the tools this time, and as you can see, big spikes the past two weekends. At least many of the tools are showing those big spike. Some tools are more delayed than others.
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
Here is some of the newer chatter from SEOs across this site, social and WebmasterWorld - I am sure the chatter will pick up after SEOs get back to their desk, when the weekend is over.
Currently, the impact of the Google update appears to be unfavorable. In my topic area: More and more AI sites (with rather silly articles), financial stuff, but nothing more. Accordingly, traffic to the news site is almost dead. Maybe we should start writing about crypto junk too; Google seems to love it right now.
Looking back over the last 60 days or so, I have seen a sizeable drop in traffic to my highest traffic category pages on my site. Roughly down 18-37% for search traffic compared to same period in 2024. Direct visits to these pages were quite a bit higher, but I tend to write off most direct traffic as bots that the analytics aren't weeding out these days.The interesting thing is the ranking for some terms is higher than ever, but the traffic is lower. Checking the highest traffic page I am now solidly in first place for months, and I also have the first image and the third image in the image block above the organic serps. There appear to be no AIO for these searches, and no ads show up for this search on desktop every time I check. But still...traffic is quite a bit lower since November. The only conclusion is: 1) people are using Google search less or 2) searches are down due to lower economic activity...people just aren't looking to buy anything. I suspect it's a combination of the two.
God, Google is getting on my nerves. The ranking is improving, but since 8 p.m. yesterday evening, there has been virtually no traffic from Google. The shop has also seen a slump since 8 p.m. Dozens of other websites whose statistics I can view have also seen a slump at exactly the same time.For the shop, it could be Christmas, but the rest... It seems as if Google is targeting small niche sites; I can't explain it any other way. Now we can only hope that this will change with the current update, because it's pointless to publish articles like this.
Yup. Giant drop, precisely at 00 GMT. You can always count on Google to do the wrong thing eventually.
Not yet zero...but close, trafficwise. No revenue for a good few days now, which is unprecedented since starting it 10 years ago.
If it couldn’t get any worse.. another drop of 20%. Hopefully it is only the update speaking for another week or so.
Ditto, I am seeing the week of Christmas (when we should be relaxing), seeing 85% less AdSense a day, it was never this low, even when I first launched the site two decades ago. Also 10% down day on day, waiting for 0 - 20 year old site.
Yes, this weekend is terrible. Drop 40 percent.
Plus Glenn Gabe with his daily core update posts:
Good Morning Google Land! This is the 12/20 edition of "Core Update Notes", and it's a special one. It looks like we might be seeing the first tremor with the December 2025 broad core update. The tools are spiking again and I'm seeing movement across a number of sites that have… pic.twitter.com/dol6VKDwWu
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 20, 2025
Good Morning Google Land! This is the 12/21 edition of "Core Update Notes" I covered yesterday how we saw the first tremor of the Dec 2025 core update. The tools spiked and I saw a number of sites see additional impact (either reversing course or moving more in the same… pic.twitter.com/fLnuW1xpTv
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 21, 2025
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
