December 2025 core update

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I can guarantee you this update started November 24th. We track 100's of sites daily in our portfolio and rankings across the board have been a yoyo. Going from Top 10 - to nowhere to be seen - to Top 10 - to nowhere - on a daily basis. Traffic and rankings very volatile since November 24th. Each morning is a roll of the dice.

Typically in core updates you'll most major ranking changes happen in within the first week.

Good luck everyone!
 
masterweb2 said:
Google has released the December 2025 core update, its third of the year. The rollout began December 11 and may take up to three weeks.
share your ranking changes here.
Click to expand...
Currently, my website still hasn’t shown any significant ranking fluctuations, and I’ll be paying close attention in the coming days.
 
GSC been very slow for new websites. Other than that no major changes
 
My keyword rankings are fluctuating a lot right now.
A site that was on the first page dropped to the fifth page, but when I search again it shows up on the first page. The rankings are also different between mobile and PC. Why is this happening?
When will it stabilize? Has a penalty been applied?
 
DanDanger said:
I can guarantee you this update started November 24th. We track 100's of sites daily in our portfolio and rankings across the board have been a yoyo. Going from Top 10 - to nowhere to be seen - to Top 10 - to nowhere - on a daily basis. Traffic and rankings very volatile since November 24th. Each morning is a roll of the dice.

Typically in core updates you'll most major ranking changes happen in within the first week.

Good luck everyone!
Click to expand...


I was honestly surprised that someone pointed this out! I feel exactly the same .I think this update might have started about 40 days ago. I even mentioned in another thread that it seems like Google is holding back my site. Even though I’m publishing 4 expert-level pieces of content daily, my traffic doesn’t go beyond a certain level. And even when one of my articles ranks #1, another one drops in ranking at the same time.
 
I’m noticing some changes already. A few well-optimized pages went up, and some older ones dropped a little. It looks like Google is focusing more on content quality and intent match. Still early in the rollout, so things may shift more in the next weeks.
 
when rankings stay steady

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Such core updates of Google often does affect rankings of websites which were not and are not doing anything wrong.
But, what most of us do not realize is that losing rankings after a core update does not necessarily mean that our webistes have problems to be fixed.
So, after a core update, just relax and do not act in haste.
 
TigerNotWoods said:
Such core updates of Google often does affect rankings of websites which were not and are not doing anything wrong.
But, what most of us do not realize is that losing rankings after a core update does not necessarily mean that our webistes have problems to be fixed.
So, after a core update, just relax and do not act in haste.
Click to expand...
If a site is currently being affected by the update and its rankings are fluctuating, is the chance of the rankings recovering after the update finishes low?
 
My positions have decreased significantly. I don't get discouraged and just keep working.
If you pay attention to your positions every time, you'll go crazy.
 
DanDanger said:
I can guarantee you this update started November 24th. We track 100's of sites daily in our portfolio and rankings across the board have been a yoyo. Going from Top 10 - to nowhere to be seen - to Top 10 - to nowhere - on a daily basis. Traffic and rankings very volatile since November 24th. Each morning is a roll of the dice.

Typically in core updates you'll most major ranking changes happen in within the first week.

Good luck everyone!
Click to expand...

I'd concur. But I believe these were two isolated updates.

We track several of our own network, client sites and even more competitors. And we track across countries.

What began in the last week of November largely settled down by 2nd December. And I can say on good authority that it got certain niches more than the other. I mean there were niches/countries that remain untouched entirely.

And then you have what began yesterday. This is a shuffle across the board. We're still in the early days but we can see tremors across the board. Not a single line chart is steady.

There was definitely an eery silence for about 10 days. Before shit hit the storm.
 
There were 2 waves in my opinion, first one end of November, second one beginning of December.
Lots of sites tanked to zero or lost visibility a lot.
I know they will recover because they always do, but it sucks for now.
 
If a site was ranking around 2nd–3rd place and then dropped to the second page, is the chance of recovery low?

There’s still some Google search cache residue, so sometimes when I search (in incognito mode), it still shows up at 2nd–3rd place.
 
Hard SEO said:
If a site was ranking around 2nd–3rd place and then dropped to the second page, is the chance of recovery low?

There’s still some Google search cache residue, so sometimes when I search (in incognito mode), it still shows up at 2nd–3rd place.
Click to expand...
That's odd. Usually when I search normally I'm #2 but when using incognito I'm #5. Always thought that had to do with me owning/visiting the site so it got pushed higher when not in incognito.

I would say wait a bit, don't do any dramatic changes for now just keep posting like normal. When I got hit in last years December update I didn't recover until I removed a lot of the pages I had posted, was publishing pretty heavy the month before and I guess they saw it as spam. Think I published 10 language translations of nearly 400 pages that got them to nuke me.
 
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