The December core update was a quick update and ran from December 12th to 18th, 2024. Google then released a surprise spam update just days after the core update was completed. It ran from December 19th to 26th.
There are many Comments to Barry Schwartz’s article about the spam update, where site owners report significant drops in traffic. Some say they are seeing an improvement in spam sites. In the time I’ve spent so far analyzing the websites I monitor, I have yet to find any that I believe were affected by the spam update. However, I believe some were affected by the December core numbers. I will update this post if I find more cases worth reporting on.
That is a terrible It’s time for an update as many sites are naturally experiencing traffic fluctuations at this time as people change their search activity over the holidays.
How to know if the December core/spam updates impacted you
For most sites, it will be difficult to say definitively whether these updates have had an impact on you. I’m pretty sure many of you reading this are despairing right now because your traffic has dropped related to the rollout of these updates. However, I bet most of you have not are particularly affected by these updates.
Here are some steps you can take to get a better idea of the impact:
1. Is there an obvious drop that accompanies the launch of an update?
While an update can impact a website at any point in the update, in the vast majority of cases I examined, the impact is felt on day one. That means we’re looking for a drop that launches on one of these days. Or possibly during the rollout period.
- December 12th – 18th: Core update
- December 19th – 26th: Spam update
Move the cursor to this data in GA4 or GSC. Is it clear that traffic starts at this point and continues to decrease?
However, it is not always easy to say. For example, is this site being discontinued in connection with the December 19 spam update? It’s a pretty big drop.
2. How does this decline compare to the previous year?
Looking at the 16-month view of traffic in GSC, this site had a similar pattern last year.
The reason for this is that it is a website that sells a product that is very popular at Christmas and needs to be shipped. Within a week before Christmas, sales naturally decline every year.
However, if you are still not sure, you can skip to step 3.
3. Have keyword rankings dropped?
Historically, tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush have been my first choice when evaluating keyword rankings. However, I’ve noticed over the last few months that they don’t always reflect what’s happening. Both tools go a long way for this site and barely show any drop in traffic.
Instead I would recommend using my Scatterplot GPT GSC looks at your keyword data. It’s not perfect because no matter how you call it, it confuses the color of lost and gained keywords along the axes. But it works well for showing the previous and current ranking of each keyword. Python is used for this, so I didn’t find any hallucinations. The goal is to determine whether the keywords have improved or decreased in ranking overall.
If you are severely negatively affected by an update, you should see significantly more red X’s above the line than green ones below.
In GSC I compared the time since the update with the previous period.
Then I exported the data and shared the queries in CSV format with my scatterplot GPT. You can see that there are actually more improved keywords than degraded ones, even if only slightly.
This site was probably not affected by the spam update, but is more likely subject to seasonal changes.
Some cases are difficult
Here’s another case that shows how difficult analyzing this update can be. If we go through the steps above, we can see that it appears to have an impact on both December 12th and December 19th.
However, we can also see that a similar pattern occurred last year.
In this case, the scatterplot shows a different story. Can you see that this image has a lot more red in it than the previous one?
There are definitely more degraded keywords than improved ones. However, when a Google update has a major impact on a website, it’s usually even more obvious.
I asked ChatGPT, Make me a list of keywords that have dropped by more than one position, sorted by impressions.
Then I searched for several of these keywords one by one, looking for clues. One very obvious thing occurred to me. The vast majority of keywords this site ranks for now display an AI overview. This will of course change user behavior as many of those looking for a quick answer will likely be happy with the AIO and fewer will click through.
There is one important thing to note here. This website still ranks on the first page of many searches. For those that have fallen, it has only fallen slightly. In my opinion, this site was not downgraded by either the core update or the spam updates, rather the rankings changed slightly with the core update. Also, new AIO answers steal visitors who previously visited this website for a quick answer.
I think most websites will notice a change in rankings and traffic once the holidays are over. Some will suffer from the availability of AI overviews that provide quick answers. Some will notice improvements because they appear in the AI overviews for searches where people are looking for more information. And many will see slight changes in rankings as Google’s systems continue to learn what people find helpful.
My theory about what’s happening with the search right now
I’ve written quite a bit about how the machine learning systems that underpin search, including RankBrain, RankEmbed BERT, and DeepRank, are evolving. If you haven’t read these yet, you might find them helpful:
From RankBrain to BERT and more: A look at the role of AI in Google’s search algorithms
Google’s helpful content and other AI systems may be affecting your website’s visibility
How Google’s helpful content system radically changed search
The helpful content system has changed ⇐If you’re short on time, read this.
Navboost and User Engagement: How Google’s Hidden Algorithm Uses User Engagement to Shape Search Rankings
My book: SEO in the Age of Gemini: The Story of How AI Changed Google Search
In March 2024, Google announced that the March core update marked a Evolution in the way they identify the usefulness of content. In the articles above, I speculated that this development came immediately after Announcement of Gemini 1.5a huge improvement in machine learning architecture that has likely improved all aspects of search that machine learning systems use.
It makes sense to me that Gemini 2.0, announced December 11tha day before the December 2024 core update would mark another leap forward. Google said: “We are working quickly to integrate it into our products, most notably Gemini.” and search.” Maybe they’re just talking about Gemini influencing future changes to the AI overviews. I think it’s much more than that.
I think Gemini 2.0 allows for more efficient processing and understanding of content, user intent, multimodal components of a page (video, images and audio), and more importantly better learning. The actions we take with each search show Google’s deep learning systems whether their prediction about what a searcher will find helpful was correct. If so, systems can prioritize the thought process that led to that recommendation. If not, the system can learn to improve.
Google told us this in 2016 You don’t understand documents but rather incorrect understanding of Watch how people who search respond.
This was written before the invention of the transformerwhich sparked the new age we live in today – an age in which AI is used to understand language and transform data into something useful.
My point is that I believe the launch of Gemini 2.0 in December 2024 has ushered in an improved era of search. We are likely to see similar changes to those seen throughout 2024. We will increasingly see that it is not SEO that determines page rankings, but rather pages that people select and then find to be a satisfactory answer.
What’s interesting is that the March core update came in conjunction with spam updates, and the December core and spam updates were launched one after the other. I expect that the new changes that came with the use of newly improved machine learning systems (Gemini 1.5 and then Gemini 2.0) will bring new opportunities for spam to the surface. Therefore, there is a greater need for algorithmic spam detection and neutralization. If you’ve noticed an increase in spam in your results over the last few weeks, I suspect this will improve as the systems learn.
What if you were affected by the spam update?
If you actually experienced a significant drop in keyword rankings and traffic related to the December 19-26 spam update, recovery may be difficult. That would mean that your success so far is due to you finding ways to trick the algorithm and not the quality of your content.
I encourage you to go through all the things on the list again Spam guidelines. I won’t list them all here, but a few that could potentially be the focus of this current update:
- Door sides: Do you have many similar pages, each optimized for a very specific search, that could really be combined into one?
- Content abuse at scale: This is not just about AI, but websites that use AI to publish content are the most likely to be affected here. If you have published many Pages with AI that generate little interest and are unlikely to be the satisfactory answer searchers choose may be worth weeding out. In some cases, it’s possible that AI content gave you more of a boost than it should, and these updates have corrected Google’s predictions.
- Thin Affiliation: Google is not against affiliate content, but your content must add value to what already exists on the web. Do you have information that can’t be found anywhere else? Or simply summarize what is already there. In the latter case, it’s probably a good idea to remove that content. Or better yet, drastically improve these pages so that they offer the searcher more than they could find elsewhere.
Google hasn’t said this is a link-related update. However, it seems that sites that previously benefited from link building for SEO purposes are suffering as AI gets better at understanding intent and what content fulfills those intents. I don’t think disavowing links is helpful.
Google has also said that this spam update is spam not related to the Website Reputation Abuse Policy.
I would like to emphasize this again Many sites that thought they were affected by the December spam update were not affected. If you are still ranking well for some non-branded keywords, you are most likely affected by the ranking changes but not suppressed due to spam.
What if you are affected by the December core update?
That’s a difficult question. Again, there’s a good chance that you haven’t been demoted, but that the ranking systems have changed in a way that favors other content.
I recommend you take a look at the pages whose clicks have decreased. Search for the keywords you want them to rank for. Put yourself in a searcher’s shoes and ask, “Why would they prefer that page or SERP feature to rank ahead of mine?” That’s hard to do.
In some cases there may be no solution. If you have a page that answers a simple question, and now an AI overview answers that question, no amount of optimization will get the majority of searchers to click on your site. On the other hand, if websites have been creeping in about you, ask yourself why.
- Is the answer easier to find? If so, change your page so that the answer you’re looking for is more obvious.
- Is the layout more modern or easier to navigate?
- Is the answer given in the form of a graphic, image or video? Can you do better?
- Is your site difficult to read due to advertisements? It’s okay to run ads, but if your site offers a much worse experience than the competition, that will be reflected in user engagement signals.
- Does your site seem more trustworthy? If so, can you improve yours?
- Are you a more recognizable brand? That’s a difficult question. You may need to work on improving your reputation by participating in podcasts, getting quoted on reputable websites, and perhaps even improving your social media presence.
Your answer is probably not simple. If the losses are significant for some sites, it may mean that people are turning to other sources and getting their answers from AI or social media. Your goal will be to figure out how to provide people with the absolute best resource. This usually involves drawing on your experiences.
For most losing sites, there will also be keywords and pages with improvements. I would encourage you to check these out. Ask yourself why they did well.
- Are they more relevant to your area of expertise?
- Do you answer a question better than others?
- Do they have helpful diagrams, images, videos or audio files?
- Are they written in a different tone?
You can try these prompts in ChatGPT or Gemini. I prefer to use that latest model from Gemini in AI Studio.
Here is my page (insert the entire page and also add a full page screenshot) and here is a competitor’s page (insert it and add a full page screenshot) Give me 10 reasons why people, who searched for (keyword) could find Is my competitor more helpful? Give me ideas on how I can improve the usefulness of my site.
or
Here is a page on my site that recently got good results for the keyword (keyword) (insert and add screenshot). And here’s another page that didn’t perform so well for the keyword (keyword): (Insert the page and screenshot). Can you spot differences? List 10 reasons why searchers might prefer the first page and not the second.
Maybe you’ll find some inspiration in the answers.