December 2024 spam update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google announced the December 2024 spam update on the Search Status Dashboard on 19 December 2024, saying it “applies globally and to all languages.” It did not publish a Search Central blog post naming a specific spam practice.

Google’s documentation explains that its automated spam detection runs constantly, and that a spam update is a notable improvement to how those systems work. It names SpamBrain, its AI-based spam-prevention system, which Google improves from time to time so it catches new types of spam.

When it rolled out#

The Google Search Status Dashboard logged the release on 19 December 2024 at 09:01 PST with the note that “the rollout may take up to 1 week to complete.” Google posted on 26 December 2024 that the rollout was complete as of that day, a total of 7 days.

It started the day after the December 2024 core update finished on 18 December 2024. The two did not overlap, but a December 2024 ranking change may come from either, so check both date ranges.

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish impact figures for this update. Its spam update documentation says only that sites violating its policies may rank lower or drop out of results entirely. Treat any percentage you see attributed to this update as a third-party estimate, and check its method.

What site owners should do#

Google’s guidance for spam updates is that sites which see a change “should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.” In practice:

• Check the site against each policy on Google’s spam policies page, including cloaking, doorway abuse, expired domain abuse, link spam, scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse and thin affiliation.
• Look in the Manual actions report in Search Console. A spam update is automated, but a manual action is reported there and needs its own fix.
• Fix violations rather than masking them. Google says a site may improve once its automated systems learn, over a period of months, that the site complies.
• If rankings came from spammy links, Google says the benefit those links generated is lost for good once its systems remove their effect.

How to check whether it affected you#

In Search Console, compare clicks for the week of 12 to 18 December 2024, when the core update ran, with the week of 27 December 2024 to 2 January 2025, and check the Manual actions report. Holiday traffic shifts over that period, so compare with the same weeks a year earlier too. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The June 2024 spam update was the spam update before it.
• The August 2025 spam update was the next one.
• The December 2024 core update finished the day before it started.