Google has begun rolling out the December 2025 core update. Google announced the change, saying, “Today we released the December 2025 core update.”
This marks the third core update of 2025 and the fourth major search update overall this year. Earlier in 2025, Google launched the August 2025 spam update, preceded by the June 2025 core update and the March 2025 core update.
Google also posted the following:
“Released the December 2025 core update. The rollout may take up to 3 weeks to complete.” On LinkedIn, Google further explained that “this is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”
Core updates are issued several times a year. They typically introduce broad, notable adjustments to Google’s search ranking systems and algorithms, which is why Google publicly confirms them. This is the third such core update in 2025.
Video overview of this core update. I recorded this short video a few hours after publishing the article:
What to do if your site is impacted. Google has not provided any fresh guidance specific to the March 2025 core update. Historically, however, Google has shared recommendations on what to review if a core update negatively affects your site:
- There are no guaranteed, specific steps to “fix” rankings. A drop in visibility does not necessarily mean your pages are broken or low quality.
- Google has published a set of questions to ask if your site is hit by a core update.
- Some improvement can occur between core updates, but the most substantial changes usually happen after a subsequent core update.
In essence: focus on creating genuinely useful content for people, not content primarily aimed at manipulating search rankings.
- “There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page,” Google has previously stated.
For additional background on how Google core updates work, see Google’s official documentation.
Recent core updates. Below is a timeline with links to our coverage of the latest core updates:
- The June 2025 core update started on June 30 and finished on July 17.
- The March 2025 core update began on Mar. 13 and concluded on Mar. 27.
- The December 2024 core update started on Dec. 12 and wrapped up on Dec. 18.
- The November 2024 core update launched on Nov. 11 and ended on Dec. 5.
- The August 2024 core update rolled out on Aug. 15 and completed on Sept. 3.
- The March 2024 core update began March 5 and finished on April 19.
- The November 2023 core update started Nov. 2 and ended on Nov. 28.
- The October 2023 core update launched Oct. 5 and completed on Oct. 19.
- The August 2023 core update began Aug. 22 and finished on Sept. 7.
- The March 2023 core update started March 15 and concluded March 28.
Why this matters. Core updates often trigger noticeable turbulence in Google Search rankings and visibility. Ideally, these changes will benefit your site or your clients’ sites, but some publishers will experience ranking declines and traffic losses.
Our hope is that this update boosts your visibility and drives more qualified traffic and conversions.
It has been quite a while since the last core update, and although we were anticipating more frequent core updates, that expectation hasn’t really materialized.