December 2017 updates (Maccabees): what Google said and what to do

What Google changed#

Google said it made several small changes, not one update. In a statement first given to Search Engine Land and posted on Twitter by Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for search, on 20 December 2017, Google wrote: “We released several minor improvements during this timeframe, part of our regular and routine efforts to improve relevancy.”

Sullivan added that after publishers reported changes, Google “checked and didn’t see any major or single change on our end,” and that reports calling it a single update “don’t reflect what we actually said.” Google described nothing about what the improvements did.

When it rolled out#

Google stated no dates. Search Engine Roundtable reported on 15 December 2017 that the changes seemed to touch down on Tuesday, 12 December, with forum chatter building late on 13 December and into 14 December. The date used here is that first reported day, so it is approximate.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures and called the improvements minor. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reviewed more than 100 affected sites and reported, as his own small-sample observations, patterns such as:

• Doorway-like pages targeting many keyword permutations.
• Low-quality content with many ads or affiliate links.
• A number of e-commerce sites, for reasons he could not pin down.

The Maccabees name is Schwartz’s, not Google’s. He suggested it on 15 December 2017 “since it happened during the holiday of Chanukah,” and the industry adopted it.

What site owners should do#

Because Google described these as routine relevancy improvements, its current core update guidance is the most useful reference:

• Compare a week of traffic after the changes with a week before, not the volatile days between.
• A small drop needs no drastic action; a large, sustained drop warrants a site-wide review against Google’s helpful, reliable, people-first content questions.
• Google’s helpful content guidance warns against search engine-first content, made primarily to gain search engine rankings.
• Avoid quick fixes, and treat deleting content as a last resort.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical. Search Console keeps only 16 months of data, so December 2017 is not in it. If you kept analytics from the time, compare Google organic traffic in the first week of December 2017 with the week before Christmas, allowing for seasonal patterns. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists the updates around it.

Related updates#

• The Fred update was an earlier 2017 change; some reports reused its name here.
• The March 2018 core update was the next Google-confirmed core change.