Google December 2024 Core Update Is Live - What Are We Seeing

Dec 13, 2024 - 7:51 am 228 — by
Filed Under Google Updates

Google December Holiday Core Update

Google surprised most of us with a new core update being announced yesterday, only a week after the November 2024 core update finished rolling out. This new December 2024 core update will take about two weeks to roll out and seems to be a normal core update that is updating one of the core systems that may have not been updated in the November release.

Google wrote on X:

The Dec. 2024 core update is rolling out, and we expect it will complete in two weeks.

If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, we have different core systems we're always improving. This past blog post explains more.

Yes, it is an old blog post. Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, explained on X, "That's why we said it was a "past post." While it was written last year, it still answers the same types of questions that come up about updates and timings."

Why a new one so fast? Well, as we just reported, Google said we should expect more core updates, more often.

Plus, Google said this core update is updating a different core system. Google wrote, "If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, we have different core systems we're always improving." So there is that.

Google December 2024 Core Update Quick Facts:

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

  • Name: Google December 2024 Broad Core Update
  • Launched: December 12, 2024 at around 10:46 am ET
  • Rollout: Will take about two 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".
  • 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 2024 Core Update Details

Google didn't say much specific about this December 2024 core update. Google did say, "we have different core systems we're always improving." So this update should differ from the November core update but how it is different, is not clear. I don't know if this will help those the folks who went to the creator summit or not.

So it seems like it is more of the same:

  • Show more content that people find genuinely useful.
  • Show less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.

Yes, a lot of joking in the SEO community about these statements. Yep, it sounds a lot like the helpful content update statements... Yes, the helpful content update is no more, it's part of core updates now, in some sense...

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, actually announced this live at the Google Search Central Live event in Zurich (well, he was remote):

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.

Previous Helpful Content Update Impact

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

Google Tracking Tools On December 2024 Core Update

Here is what these Google Search volatility tools are showing so far; keep in mind that this update can take about two weeks to fully roll out. It was volatile for the past week, with the post November core update volatility as well. It is likely too early to see the impact but hey...

Advanced Web Rankings:

Advancedwebranking

Semrush:

Semrush

Accuranker:

Accuranker

SimilarWeb:

Similarweb

Sistrix:

Sistrix

Wincher:

Wincher

Cognitive SEO:

Cognitiveseo

Mozcast:

Mozcast

Mangools:

Mangools

Algoroo:

Algoroo

SERPstat:

Serpstat

Data For SEO:

Dataforseo

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the chatter over the past 24-hours from here, WebmasterWorld and the socials:

After days of huge drops, this morning I noticed a significant improvement. Has anyone else noticed?

We’ll see a year-end traffic drop starting tomorrow, the 13th. Then, we will see a larger drop Friday the 20th. It’s the same every year.

Everything has changed around here in the last hour. Very massive drop! Right now I have practically ZERO active users on my main site. This is insane. Either Google broke it, or my site was penalized.

Today analytics says no organic traffic probably I misbehaved.

They were not kidding about moving fast. Literally not a single calm week.

December 2024 core update explains the rollercoaster abyss of the last few days.

Tragic. The November 2023 Core update has been repeated. I'm now ranking last on the Google News tab. Immediately after the December core update.

Conclusion today: Traffic once again at almost 0, ranking is constantly changing, I can actually close the news page.

Shop: Sales have completely collapsed since midday, hardly any traffic from Google (despite Adwords), but Amazon adverts for every product they offer, even if Amazon doesn't sell it at all.

That's not the half of it.

And now for the shape of things to come:

[image or embed]

— Sasch Mayer (@saschmayer.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 11:53 AM

Oh, don't do this:

Forum discussion at X, LinkedIn and WebmasterWorld.

 

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