As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it seemed to cool a bit towards the middle of the week. Now, I am seeing signs of more intense volatility hit on Saturday, December 20th.

As a reminder, Google officially announced this core update on December 11th at around 12:25 pm ET. Google said this update will take up to three weeks to roll out. Google also said, this update "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites." Generally, but not always, we start to see ranking movement from these updates a day or two after it is announced and this update seems to show that. Then generally, we see another big shift with these updates a week or two into the update. Then we may see smaller or sometimes even bigger shuffled throughout and even after the core update was announced done - maybe smaller core updates and adjustments.

I believe we might be seeing the final wave of volatility for this update now, but I can be wrong - I am wrong a lot.

So, what are we seeing with the Google December 2025 core update?

Google Tracking Tools On December 2025 Core Update

Let's start with the tools this time, and as you can see, big spikes the past two weekends. At least many of the tools are showing those big spike. Some tools are more delayed than others.

Semrush:

Mozcast:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

Wincher:

SERPstat:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter On The December 2025 Core Update

Here is some of the newer chatter from SEOs across this site, social and WebmasterWorld - I am sure the chatter will pick up after SEOs get back to their desk, when the weekend is over.

Currently, the impact of the Google update appears to be unfavorable. In my topic area: More and more AI sites (with rather silly articles), financial stuff, but nothing more. Accordingly, traffic to the news site is almost dead. Maybe we should start writing about crypto junk too; Google seems to love it right now.

Looking back over the last 60 days or so, I have seen a sizeable drop in traffic to my highest traffic category pages on my site. Roughly down 18-37% for search traffic compared to same period in 2024. Direct visits to these pages were quite a bit higher, but I tend to write off most direct traffic as bots that the analytics aren't weeding out these days.

The interesting thing is the ranking for some terms is higher than ever, but the traffic is lower. Checking the highest traffic page I am now solidly in first place for months, and I also have the first image and the third image in the image block above the organic serps. There appear to be no AIO for these searches, and no ads show up for this search on desktop every time I check. But still...traffic is quite a bit lower since November. The only conclusion is: 1) people are using Google search less or 2) searches are down due to lower economic activity...people just aren't looking to buy anything. I suspect it's a combination of the two.

God, Google is getting on my nerves. The ranking is improving, but since 8 p.m. yesterday evening, there has been virtually no traffic from Google. The shop has also seen a slump since 8 p.m. Dozens of other websites whose statistics I can view have also seen a slump at exactly the same time.

For the shop, it could be Christmas, but the rest... It seems as if Google is targeting small niche sites; I can't explain it any other way. Now we can only hope that this will change with the current update, because it's pointless to publish articles like this.

Yup. Giant drop, precisely at 00 GMT. You can always count on Google to do the wrong thing eventually.

Not yet zero...but close, trafficwise. No revenue for a good few days now, which is unprecedented since starting it 10 years ago.

If it couldn't get any worse.. another drop of 20%. Hopefully it is only the update speaking for another week or so.

Ditto, I am seeing the week of Christmas (when we should be relaxing), seeing 85% less AdSense a day, it was never this low, even when I first launched the site two decades ago. Also 10% down day on day, waiting for 0 - 20 year old site.

Yes, this weekend is terrible. Drop 40 percent.

Wow a -40% drop from Google alone yesterday. One would assume with the holidays the niche I'm in would bring in traffic. Alas.. traffic from Big G continues to drop for its second consecutive month now. Up until November all was okay still. I have noticed an increase of AIO in my niche now. Was hoping they would ignore the niche as it generally has low RPM and the original overviews more or less didn't exist. But nope, its now just spam it anywhere and everywhere.

Plus Glenn Gabe with his daily core update posts:

Good Morning Google Land! This is the 12/20 edition of "Core Update Notes", and it's a special one. It looks like we might be seeing the first tremor with the December 2025 broad core update. The tools are spiking again and I'm seeing movement across a number of sites that have'... pic.twitter.com/dol6VKDwWu

'" Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 20, 2025

Good Morning Google Land! This is the 12/21 edition of "Core Update Notes" I covered yesterday how we saw the first tremor of the Dec 2025 core update. The tools spiked and I saw a number of sites see additional impact (either reversing course or moving more in the same'... pic.twitter.com/fLnuW1xpTv

'" Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 21, 2025

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, and it already has a significant impact on Google Search results. The most noticeable day of the impact was Saturday, December 13th, but there are plenty of signs it started to hit hard on Friday, December 12th.

As a reminder, Google officially announced this core update on December 11th at around 12:25 pm ET. Google said this update will take up to three weeks to roll out. Google also said, this update "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

Generally, but not always, we start to see ranking movement from these updates a day or two after it is announced and this update seems to show that. Then generally, we see another big shift with these updates a week or two into the update. Then we may see smaller or sometimes even bigger shuffled throughout and even after the core update was announced done - maybe smaller core updates and adjustments.

Keep in mind, the Google Search Console reporting is still delayed making it a big harder for some to track.

So, what are we seeing with the Google December 2025 core update?

SEO Chatter On The December 2025 Core Update

Let's start with what I see the SEO community talking about after the core update was announced. I am pulling these from WebmasterWorld, Black Hat World and our site:

Where is the traffic? What is happening?

So for today: travel site zero affiliate sales, niche-niche-niche site: one good lead/ sale. Traffic on the travel site: worse than ever, and as said, none are converting. Rien ne va plus, guys :D. I think my frustration now will reach a turning point, becoming funny cynicism.

My keyword rankings are fluctuating a lot right now. A site that was on the first page dropped to the fifth page, but when I search again it shows up on the first page. The rankings are also different between mobile and PC. Why is this happening? When will it stabilize? Has a penalty been applied?

I'm noticing some changes already. A few well-optimized pages went up, and some older ones dropped a little. It looks like Google is focusing more on content quality and intent match. Still early in the rollout, so things may shift more in the next weeks.

My positions have decreased significantly. I don't get discouraged and just keep working. If you pay attention to your positions every time, you'll go crazy.

Seeing mixed results so far some pages up slightly, others volatile. Too early to draw conclusions until the rollout fully settles.

Seeing a bit of an uplift on my main site. Rankings on the core terms are bouncing around quite a lot though. Too early to say what's really going on, but there's definitely movement.

Merry Christmas everyone, 8% down every day crazy.

Has anyone seen zero traffic from Google Discover in the last 24 hours?

Mine hasn't completely disappeared yet, but it dropped by 98% in the days leading up to this update being announced.

My website dropped to 4th page after being in top 3 for like 4 years, I have seen many updates but 4 years of content designed for user experience is nothing to google but a Google site with an image and a silly link to an ad seems to be better than mine. Thats cool.

Consistently ranked top 1-3 on most of my relevant keywords for 2-3 years, now i'm on the 2nd page all of a sudden. Feels like a bad joke by Google

Lost all ranking overnight :( website with an age of over 10 years. Never used AI. Gone.

Update: Glenn Gabe shared some charts showing the early impact as well:

Google Morning Google Land! This is the 12/14 edition of "Core Update Notes". As expected, the update is landing, and in a big way for some sites already. I'm seeing big swings in search visibility based on running the numbers for over 3K sites previously impacted by major'... pic.twitter.com/upQT4tNVbh

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 14, 2025

Google Tracking Tools On December 2025 Core Update

You can see that many of the tools started to heat up this weekend:

Semrush:

Wincher:

Mozcast:

SERPstat:

Accuranker:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mangools:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

And it is just the weekend, I suspect a lot more SEOs will pick up on these changes when they get into the office on Monday morning.

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.

Google officially announced the rollout of the December 2025 core update on Thursday at around 12:25 pm ET. This core update is expected to take up to 3 weeks to roll out. Google said this "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

This is the third core update of 2025, we also had a spam update in 2025, and that is it so far for 2025. I guess the volatility we reported on earlier this week was not too far off?

In fact, in the past several hours, the chatter within the SEO community around volatility significantly spiked. So I am not surprised we got a core update this week. More so that Google hinted a core update was coming soon.

We previously had the June 2025 core update and then before that the March 2025 core update, and more recently the August 2025 spam update.

I'll be honest, I was beginning to think we wouldn't get a core update again this year and maybe in the future - like Google would not confirm them in the future. I mean, Google did promise us more core updates, more often and that didn't happen but hey, we at least got Google to confirm this one. Google did tell us more core updates will come and it did.

Tracking this one should get easier once Google updates the delayed Search Console reporting.

Google December 2025 Core Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

• Name: Google December 2025 Broad Core Update
• Launched: December 11, 2025 at around 12:25 pm ET
• Rollout: Will take up to three weeks to roll out
• Targets: It looks at all types of content
• Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards great web pages
• Global: This is a global update impacting all regions, in all languages.
• Impact: The normal core update - updating some of the "core systems". Google said this December update is a "regular update."
• Discover: Core updates impact Google Discover and other features, also feature snippets and more.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's core update advice.
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. Maybe this is what we saw the past couple of weeks or all those unconfirmed Google updates.

Google December 2025 Core Update Details

Google said this update will take about three weeks to roll out and "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

That is all we know right now but we will be tracking it.

Video On Google December 2025 Core Update:

I made this video a few hours after posting this story:

Previous Broad Core Updates

Here is a list of the most recent core updates we've seen since Google started to confirm them. Previously, we nicknamed them Phantom updates or unconfirmed updates.

• June 2025 Core Update: June 30, 2025 through July 17, 2025
• March 2025 Core Update: March 13, 2025 through March 27, 2025
• December 2024 Core Update: December 12, 2024 through December 18, 2024
• November 2024 Core update: November 11, 2024 through December 5, 2024
• August 2024 Core Update : August 15, 2024 through September 3, 2024
• March 2024 Core Update : March 5, 2024 through April 19, 2024
• November 2023 Core Update : November 2, 2023 through November 28, 2023
• October 2023 Core Update: October 5, 2023 through October 19, 2023
• August 2023 Core Update: August 22, 2023 through September 7, 2023
• March 2023 Core Update: March 15, 2023 through March 28, 2023
• September 2022 Core Update: September 12, 2022 through September 26, 2022
• May 2022 Core Update: May 25, 2022 through June 9, 2022
• November 2021 Core Update: November 17, 2021 through November 30, 2021
• July 2021 Core Update: July 1, 2021 through July 12, 2021
• June 2021 Core Update: June 2, 2021 through June 12, 2021
• December 2020 Core Update: December 3, 2020 through December 16, 2020
• May 2020 Core Update: May 4, 2020 through May 18, 2020
• January 2020 Core Update: January 13, 2020 through mostly January 17, 2020
• September 2019 Core Update: September 24, 2019
• Google June 2019 Core Update: June 3, 2019 through June 8, 2019

Previous Helpful Content Update Impact

Here is the list of the previous Google helpful content updates:

• Septemebr 14, 2023 - September 2023 Google helpful content update - completing on Septmeber 28, 2023
• December 5, 2022 - December 2022 Google helpful content update, completing on January 12, 2023
• August 25, 2022 - August 2022 (original) Google helpful content update, completing on September 9, 2022

Recent Unconfirmed Google Updates

We reported unconfirmed Google ranking volatility as recently as December 7th and 8th and then it was December 3rd and 4th. Then we covered one right before Thanksgiving and that one was a very big one. Then before that was November 20th and then November 12th and then before that with what I called the Movember update around November 8th and then the Halloween update and then between October 15th to 17th and then on October 7/8th.

Google Tracking Tools On December 2025 Core Update

Semrush:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

Wincher:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter on the December 2025 Core Update

It was just announced, so I will add more to this as the day goes on. Here are some of the chatter from this morning on this site and WebmasterWorld:

See no updates but traffic looks down. who even knows what's going on. haha. pretty much most of the traffic I get is from Signapore at this point. They are bots of course. Asinine.

Yeah traffic is down like 80% today. Crazy stuff!

Traffic has been tepid at best...quite a bit lower than last year this time. I am also noticing that I have been losing top ranking terms steadily for a month now. Nothing new there, that is a common cycle with Google for years. What does scare me is that some of my top pages are suddenly demoted to page two out of the blue, after being top three for a decade. And it's not just a blip, it's sticking. We won't talk about sales...they are abysmal in the USA since about May, and (almost) non-existent from outside the USA. I was hoping that the lower dollar would help, but it seems not.

Very, very, very worse today. And google doesn<<'t say anything - apparently there have been more than 1 big update in the past weeks.

It is going downhill, so fast. Traffic is quite bad, but more importantly the conversions are none existent. It seems to be the law, that when the traffic and positions are in decline, it doesn't hit the conversions in equal measures, there are not less conversions, but just gone.

I take it back, traffic has dropped again at lunchtime today, so today is another bad day... I can probably write off December, the news site's revenue isn't even 10 euros, RPM is already digging a hole in the basement. I'm slowly starting to hope that a core update will come soon, which will hopefully bring some improvements.

Oh, and I'm seeing the same drop today on dozens of other websites... at exactly the same time. So Google continues to play its game.

For those hit by core updates in the past, do comment below if/when you start to see changes. I hope you all see major improvements with rankings and more importantly, traffic and conversions.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google updated its core update documentation to say it does smaller core updates and does not announce those updates. This is not new; Google told us this back in 2019. What is new is that Google added it to its search developer documentation.

Meanwhile, Google's John Mueller said yesterday we should expect a larger, confirmed core update, soon. So I guess many of these unconfirmed Google updates may be those smaller core updates or other updates to its search algorithms that Google did not confirm?

Google wrote, "Added information to the core updates documentation about how Google continually makes updates to our search algorithms (including smaller core updates), and how that can affect your website." Google said this was "To clarify that site owners that make content improvements can see a rise in position in Google Search results without having to wait for the next major core update."

Here is what Google added:

However, you don't necessarily have to wait for a major core update to see the effect of your improvements. We're continually making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. These updates are not announced because they aren't widely noticeable, but they are another way that your content can see a rise in position (if you've made improvements).

Compare that to what Danny Sullivan from Google told us back in 2019:

Broad core updates tend to happen every few months. Content that was impacted by one might not recover - assuming improvements have been made - until the next broad core update is released.

However, we're constantly making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. We don't announce all of these because they're generally not widely noticeable. Still, when released, they can cause content to recover if improvements warrant.

Again, not new, but new to the developer docs.

Forum discussion at X.

It was a heated weekend, the Google Search ranking volatility was pretty heated and there was a lot of chatter within the SEO industry. Not all the tools are showing big swings but many are. And everyone is asking, what happened with Google confirming core updates - is that over?

All this volatility is going on while we have huge delays with Search Console reporting for the past couple of weeks.

As a reminder, the last time we reported on Google ranking volatility was December 3rd and 4th. Then we covered one right before Thanksgiving and that one was a very big one. Then before that was November 20th and then November 12th and then before that with what I called the Movember update around November 8th and then the Halloween update and then between October 15th to 17th and then on October 7/8th.

Again, it doesn't seem like Google is in any mood to confirm core updates anymore. The more core update, more often did not happen this year.

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the more recent chatter on this site and on WebmasterWorld:

Further drop in traffic from Google today. Other SEs are really taking share in my different analytics tools. Too much if you look at the marketshare of SEs in general. Really going downhill overall even further, unbelievable.

Down to 25%.

Amazon sales up another 80%.

Something's happened ... Like many others I see all sorts of email garbage every day BUT this weekend Saturday had 2, Sunday 0 and so far after 11 hours, Monday 2.

Anyone else?

It is a total mess today, again. Downhill still.

Good morning, Google. The weekend is over, time to continue destroying websites. There were ghostly signs of recovery for two days, but today everything collapsed again.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing right now:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SimilarWeb:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

Semrush:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

Wincher:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I am seeing some signs of a Google Search ranking update and intense volatility that kicked in late yesterday. The SEO community started chattering about it over the past several hours and some of the tools are showing a spike in volatility with the Google search rankings.

The last time we reported on Google ranking volatility was right before Thanksgiving and that one was a very big one. Then before that was November 20th and then November 12th and then before that with what I called the Movember update around November 8th and then the Halloween update and then between October 15th to 17th and then on October 7/8th.

I am still confused why we have not had more core update, more often. And more importantly, why someone from Google didn't communicate anything about it.

So what are we seeing?

SEO Chatter

Let's start with the chatter within the SEO community. Keep in mind, there was some sort of Google Analytics real time issue yesterday morning but that was fixed after a few hours.

The folks at WebmasterWorld started to pick it up last night:

Someone help me. Why am I still up at 4am in the morning editing articles? More so when traffic is still dropping.. I need my sanity tablets...

I'm wondering the same thing. Since Wednesday, traffic has dropped by another 80%. I don't even need to mention advertising revenue, and I'm slowly starting to fear that things won't recover and the news site will just die out.

Something happened between Dec 2nd and 3rd. -50% drop.

Worst drop last night. Not a single user between noon and 4am.

We are at 30% of normal traffic.

That is some of the chatter... I suspect it will get noiser soon.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing right now, again, I suspect some will update tomorrow with more heat. I may update the post to show what the tools are showing tomorrow (charts were updated):

Semrush:

Algoroo:

Mozcast:

Wincher:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google may have pushed out a Google search ranking update over the past couple of days. Although the chatter was somewhat quiet, it picked up today and some of the tools are also picking up on an update. I suspect the update and volatility started a couple of days ago, maybe on Monday, November 24th.

I noticed some limited signs over the past couple of days but held off on reporting it because I just covered an update story on November 20th and felt it was a continuation of that. But maybe it is not.

A lot of SEOs are noticing big ranking moves, changes to search referrals, traffic changes and conversion changes.

The last time we reported on Google ranking volatility was on November 20th and then November 12th and then before that with what I called the Movember update around November 8th and then the Halloween update and then between October 15th to 17th and then on October 7/8th and to be honest, there has been a lot less chatter since Google turned off the ability to see 100 results per page and the tools began to recalibrate. But that being said, SEOs can tell, outside of these tools, when there is a ranking adjustment and it seems there was a significant one around October 16th.

Of course, the biggest shopping day of the year is Friday, aka Black Friday. I hope you all land on the positive side of this volatility...

I am going to call this the Thanksgiving 2025 Google update because tomorrow is Thanksgiving...

So what are we seeing?

SEO Chatter

There is some chatter in the comments on this site and a bit on WebmasterWorld:

I think there's an update, started 2 days ago. Anyone noticing any shuffle?

Yes 100%! My traffic and everything is acting just like an update is going on, Some of the SEO tools are showing it as well. Surprised you haven't done a post about it yet Barry Schwartz.

Dramatic ranking changes, not using any tools. Just lower traffic, rankings and no conversions etc.

I'm seeing ranking changes for sure. Some good and some terrible.

Yes a lot of shuffling.

Same. Shuffle is started. No traffic totally. Discover shows old articles. Index is with delay.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing over the past couple of days (note, I updated a number of the charts on Thanksgiving day morning):

Semrush:

Wincher:

Mozcast:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Algoroo:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

So what do you see? Seems like it picked up a couple of days ago.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I am seeing some signs of a Google search ranking update over the past day or so but the chatter is super limited right now. Many of the tools spike yesterday but like I said, the SEO community chatter was calm.

I wonder if this volatility was related to maybe the Cloudflare outage or Gemini 3 rolling out. Probably neither but maybe the Cloudflare outage caused some short term indexing issues where Google temporarily removed some pages from its search results, causing the tools to pick up volatility? Or maybe Google Search quietly incorporated Gemini 3 models into the core ranking systems - I doubt it.

The last time we reported on Google ranking volatility was on November 12th and then before that with what I called the Movember update around November 8th and then the Halloween update and then between October 15th to 17th and then on October 7/8th and to be honest, there has been a lot less chatter since Google turned off the ability to see 100 results per page and the tools began to recalibrate. But that being said, SEOs can tell, outside of these tools, when there is a ranking adjustment and it seems there was a significant one around October 16th.

Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing over the past couple of days:

Semrush:

Wincher:

Mozcast:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Mangools:

Accuranker:

SimilarWeb:

Data For SEO:

SERPstat:

Sistrix:

CognitiveSEO:

Algoroo:

Zutrix:

Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:

SEO Chatter

Like I said, the chatter in the SEO community is super limited. WebmasterWorld and this site is quiet:

No sales yesterday not using cloudflare but most of my competitors do, that means that only zombies seen our ads damn it?

In most cases this are one-hit visitors from US, India, Singapore .... This traffic comes in surges and lasts for about 10 to 15 minutes.

If it is not Google spinning the wheel, it is hard to explain why real Google traffic is completely (100%) gone, while this "bot" or "Google fake" traffic hits our site? It was completely gone for 3 weeks, and on Thursday, the abnormal traffic is back and gets worse every day. And it started soon after we got an email from Google to increase our visibility on GSA.

Yes, and not just a little bit. According to Sistrix, my website's ranking has improved significantly in the last 24 hours. (Sorry, I can't take a picture of the charts with my phone at the moment.)

— Micha (@michaz42) November 20, 2025

** 'Seeing a subtle pattern: volatility is clustered around pages with fluctuating intent signals.
Not huge swings '" more like micro-rebalancing. Almost looks like Google recalibrating entity-to-query mappings rather than rewriting rankings.'**

— Stefano Galloni (@achille610) November 20, 2025

So what are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

GGoogle’s AI spam detection tool, ‘SpamBrain,’ now detects low-quality AI content with 98% accuracy. This is a significant improvement from 92% in 2024.

This means Google is getting better at identifying and penalizing websites that rely on low-quality or automated content.

THE IMPACT ON SEO

This powerful update means that websites using mass-produced, AI-generated content are more vulnerable to penalties. If your content is thin, irrelevant, or lacks real value, Google’s smarter AI system will flag it. With a bigger emphasis on user experience, SEO strategies must evolve or face being penalized.

AI-GENERATED SPAM FACES THE HAMMER

Google’s algorithm has gotten better at detecting and penalizing low-quality AI-generated content. If your content is primarily produced by AI and doesn’t offer real value, it could face severe penalties, including lower rankings or de-indexing.

PARASITE SEO GETS CRUSHED

• Some websites use high-authority platforms like Medium, Quora, or LinkedIn to rank by leveraging spammy backlinks.
• Google is now actively devaluing these tactics and may penalize both the site hosting the links and the offenders themselves.

Source: Website traffic dropped almost 40% without known issue

STRICTER LINK & ANCHOR TEXT SCRUTINY

• Over-optimized anchor texts (e.g., “best iPhone deals 2025”) now trigger penalties.
• Paid links are easier to detect thanks to Google’s new LinkGraph AI, which identifies unnatural linking patterns.

Source: Outreachmonks

USER ENGAGEMENT SIGNALS MATTER

Google now tracks:

• Dwell time (how long users stay on your page)
• Pogo-sticking (quick back-to-SERP clicks indicate poor content)
• Mobile UX (slow-loading sites lose rankings)

 Audit Your Content

• Remove or rewrite thin, duplicate, or AI-generated spam content.
• Follow Google’s “Helpful Content” guidelines as a checklist.

 Fix Technical SEO

• Improve Core Web Vitals (speed, responsiveness, and stability).
• Resolve broken links, redirects, and indexing issues.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR SITE? CONT.

 Build Natural Links

• Focus on earned media, guest posts, and PR efforts.
• Avoid PBNs (Private Blog Networks). Google busted over 12,000+ PBNs in Q1 2025.

 Monitor Rankings & Manual Actions

• Use Google Search Console to stay updated on spam alerts.
• Check for Manual Actions under “Security & Manual Actions.

What Google Means:

• Hosting casino, payday loan, or affiliate content on popular sites like .edu blogs, media platforms, or job portals.
• The goal? To exploit domain authority for fast rankings.

Moving Forward: If your site allows external content:

• Review it closely.
• Only publish posts that match your site’s main topic.
• Say no to “sponsored spam.”

What This Means for SEOs

Gone are the days when:

• AI could flood your blog with content.
• Buying backlinks = ranking.
• Expired domains = shortcut to authority.

Google is shifting full force towards real quality, experience-based content, and intent alignment.
If you’re relying on shortcuts — this update is a wake-up call.
If you’re building long-term value — this is your opportunity to rise.

SEO Action Plan for 2025 & Beyond

Create Real Content

Use real experiences, expert advice, case studies, or insights. Even when using AI, make the content uniquely yours.

Diversify Your Link Profile

Stop chasing spammy backlinks. Instead, focus on editorial links, PR, HARO, and community-based strategies.

Avoid Domain Tricks

If you’re buying expired domains, make sure they serve a real, relevant purpose — or avoid them altogether.

Don’t Host Trash Content

No more “quick affiliate wins” on unrelated high-authority blogs. Keep your site clean and focused.