Quick heads-up in case you didn’t know already: Google is officially rolling out the December 2025 core update (started Dec 11). It’s a broad one - not niche-specific, not a penalty update, just Google reshuffling how it weighs content across the board.
A few key bits worth noting:
It’s the third core update of 2025 (after March + June).
Rollout could take up to ~3 weeks, so expect volatility.
Google’s repeating the usual line: ranking drops don’t mean you did anything “wrong” - it’s more a rebalancing exercise.
(or in other words - “what the hell do we do with all this AI webspam?“)
Interesting extra context: Google’s also been more open lately about the fact they’re pushing smaller, unannounced core tweaks all the time, not just these named updates. So if your charts have looked like a seismograph lately, that’s to be expected.
From a parasite SEO angle: I’d personally avoid knee-jerk changes mid-rollout. Let the dust settle, watch which pages gain (that’s usually more useful than obsessing over losers), and see what Google’s quietly rewarding this time.
Sit tight folks and don’t freak out … wait, observe, adapt - or just forget about Google all together. Lol
Source : SEJ Article (if you can stand all the pop-ups!)
Always amazes me how, 2 or 3 days into an update, everyone loses their minds. There’s really no point drawing any real conclusions until the new year now … 2026 here we come!
Looks like this update is still ongoing… This PPC Land piece is basically a cheerful little holiday horror story, especially for publishers of news sites. It says Google’s December 2025 core update (announced Dec 11, 2025, at about 12:25 pm ET) hit hard almost immediately, with big changes showing up around Dec 12–13 and a rollout that could run for up to roughly three weeks (so, into early January 2026).
The headline pain point: Google Discover traffic. Multiple news and content site owners reported their Discover clicks and impressions dropping off a cliff, sometimes straight to zero within about a day, even after years of stable performance. One example cited is a publisher going from 100,000+ Discover clicks per day to none.
Alongside the Discover chaos, the post describes “maximum” style ranking volatility across loads of tracking tools (and plenty of “I was top 3 for years and now I’m on page 4” panic).
Yup, and that is why I’m starting to look into other traffic sources than just Pinterest, which is what I mainly rely on. 2026 may be the year I take on Facebook. We’ll see though. I’ve given up on Google traffic a long while ago, lol.
Thanks for posting Diane … just reading this and something that immediately jumped right off the page for me:
One forum participant described losing all ranking overnight for a website exceeding 10 years in age that had never utilized artificial intelligence for content generation.
As many of us on this forum have experienced since HCU ‘23, Google couldn’t give a sh1t about your pride and joy website you’ve been lovingly creating for 10 years, refusing to use AI. You’ll still get slapped … and plenty are getting slapped really hard in this update!
It’s partly why I have absolutely no problem with using tools like SEO Neo. Google doesn’t care about me and I don’t care about Google. If Ican generate 10k backlinks to a target and push it up the rankings, I’ll do it … and I won’t be worrying about flooding the web with all that spam.
One does have to question the logic of nuking a site like this though. 10 years, tens of thousands of clicks a day. What are they doing wrong, all of a sudden?
It says Google’s December 2025 core update (announced Dec 11, 2025, at about 12:25 pm ET) hit hard almost immediately, with big changes showing up around Dec 12–13 and a rollout that could run for up to roughly three weeks (so, into early January 2026).