December 2025 core update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google’s only announcement was the Search Status Dashboard entry: “Released the December 2025 core update.” It published no Search Central blog post and named no specific system or change. Its standing documentation describes core updates as “significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems” that “don’t target specific sites or individual web pages.”

Two days before the release, on 9 December 2025, Google added a section to that documentation on smaller core updates. It says Google makes these continually and that they “are not announced because they aren’t widely noticeable,” but can still lift a site that has improved its content.

When it rolled out#

The Google Search Status Dashboard logged the release on 11 December 2025 at 09:25 PST with the note that “the rollout may take up to 3 weeks to complete.” Google posted on 29 December 2025 at 11:05 PST that “the rollout was complete as of December 29, 2025,” a total of 18 days. No other confirmed update in our timeline overlapped this rollout, so a change inside those dates is easier to attribute than usual.

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish any impact figures for this update. Its documentation says most sites “don’t need to worry about core updates and may not even realize one has happened,” and that pages which move down “aren’t necessarily bad”; other pages may simply serve the searcher better. 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 standing core update guidance sets out the steps:

• Wait until the rollout has finished, then at least one more full week.
• Compare the week after with a week before the update began, not with the rollout window.
• A small drop (position 2 to 4) needs no drastic action; a large, sustained drop warrants a site-wide self-assessment against Google’s helpful, reliable, people-first content questions.
• Avoid quick fixes. Improve content in ways that help readers; delete content only as a last resort.
• Recovery can take months, though Google says smaller, unannounced core updates can also reflect improvements before the next major one.

How to check whether it affected you#

In Search Console, set the Performance report to a range spanning late November 2025 to mid January 2026 and compare clicks for the week before 11 December with the week starting 5 January. Look at Web, Image, Video and News search types separately, as Google recommends. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The June 2025 core update was the core update before it.
• The March 2026 core update was the next one.
• The February 2026 Discover update was the next confirmed update of any type.