Google today released the December 2025 core update. Google said this core update “Today we released the December 2025 core update.”
This is the third core update of 2025, and the fourth overall update in all of 2025. Google previously had the August 2025 spam update, before that was the June 2025 core update and before that was the March 2025 core update.
Google also wrote:
“Released the December 2025 core update. The rollout may take up to 3 weeks to complete.” Google added on LinkedIn, “this is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”
Core updates happen multiple times per year. Core updates can have significant, broad changes to Google’s search algorithms and systems, which is why Google announces them. This is the third core update of 2025.
Video on this core update. I made this short video a few hours after publishing this story:
What to do if you are hit. Google didn’t share any new advice specific to the March 2025 core update. However, in the past, Google has provided advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update:
- There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.
- Google offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update.
- Google said you can see some recovery between core updates, but the biggest change would be after another core update.
In short: write helpful content for people and not to rank in search engines.
- “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 said previously.
For more details on Google core updates, you can read Google’s documentation.
Previous core updates. Here’s a timeline and our coverage of recent core updates:
- The June 2025 core update was on June 30 and ended on July 17.
- The March 2025 core update was on Mar. 13 and ended on Mar. 27.
- The December 2024 core update was on Dec. 12 and ended on Dec. 18.
- The November 2024 core update was on Nov. 11 and ended on Dec. 5.
- The August 2024 core update was on Aug. 15 and ended on Sept. 3.
- The March 2024 core update was on March 5 and ended on April 19.
- The November 2023 core update was on Nov. 2 and ended on Nov. 28.
- The October 2023 core update was on Oct. 5 and ended on Oct. 19
- The August 2023 core update was on Aug. 22 and ended Sept. 7.
- The March 2023 core update was on March 15 and ended March 28.
Why we care. With any core update, we often see significant volatility within the Google search results and ranking. These updates will hopefully improve the rankings of your sites or your clients’ sites. But some of you may see fluctuations or even downgrades in Google rankings and organic traffic.
We hope this update rewards you all and sends you lots of traffic and conversions.
It has been a long time since we had a core update and while we were expecting more core update, more often – it seemed that didn’t really happen.
