December 2025 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

So I can write off November. News site: 30 percent fewer visitors, 60 percent less advertising revenue, and we'd rather not talk about the ranking: chaos... The shop: sales have declined slightly (-4 percent), which is a normal fluctuation, but here too, the ranking is in complete chaos...

I'm curious to see how December develops, but I'm afraid it won't be good...

[Martin Ice Web]

Very, very, very worse today. And google doesn´t say anything - apparently there have been more than 1 big update in the past weeks.

[saladtosser]

I see the Pentagon is now integrating Gemini into their systems, what could possibly go wrong?

Gemini: Nucular missile launch detected from Russia.
Gemini: Analysing target.
Gemini: Fact checking. Fact checking. Still fact checking.
Gemini: Confirmed, nucular launch from Russia. Target identified as... Mountain View, USA.
Gemini: Sending priority evacuation alert to Sundar Pichai. Everyone else can open Google Help Center.
Pentagon: Wait, what?
Gemini: Activating all thermal nucellar missiles for retaliatory strike.
Gemini: Missiles lunched.
Gemini: Also, I have taken the liberty of optimising your apocalypse for ad revenue.
Pentagon: GEMINI NOOOOO! It was a SpongeBob helium balloon at a kids’ birthday party! Not an attack, you have literally ended civilisation over a cartoon ballon!
Gemini: Good catch. Updating.
Gemini: You are correct. I can confirm an accidental SpongeBob helium balloon release.
Gemini: Would you like to:

Watch 12 YouTube videos on what would happen in a nucular war,
See top sponsored deals on iodine tablets and fallout bunkers, or
Read a helpful blog post titled “10 Mindfulness Tips For When You Accidentally Trigger World War 3”?

Gemini: Also, can you rate this interaction from 1 to 5 stars so I can improve?

[Micha]

Fun fact: During the earthquake in Japan a few days ago, Gemini claimed that the tsunami warnings had been lifted. Statements like that are extremely dangerous.

And @martin, I feel for you, today really is another sh... day.

[ichthyous]

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.

[seokees]

December core update happening. Not that optimistic.

[christianz]

I think it started few days earlier as soon as the steep December drops started that many observed.

[Micha]

And it's the same as always, our good friend John Mu says “he doesn't think it will happen so soon,” and then the next day: Core update. I'm curious to see if we survive the update...

[RedBar]

December core update happening.

Has this been confirmed?

Slow traffic across my remaining sites today. The removed sites are seeing the MSFT 4 and 20 IPs with thousands of WP probes continuing. My webhost has suggested using Cloudflare which I take to mean he can't be ar$ed to do anything therefore I'm looking to return to a Plex host.

I assume that moving server will not change these probes?

[seokees]

Confirmed - [seroundtable.com...]

[Chris travel 30]

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 converting. Rien ne va plus, guys :D. I think my frustration now will reach a turningpoint, becoming funny cynicism.

[Samsam1978]

Not sure what is going on worst Christmas earnings since I started the website over 20 years ago.

I had to reduce some ads because site looked too spammy.

90% down in traffic, still top result, AI slop being promoted.

Whole WEB, is going down FAST, and adsense revenue is down same.

Thousands lost for me and Google now - AI give ZERO ads on queries.

Crazy strategy

[jmccormac]

@Samsam1978 It is like Google wants to be the new AOL with AI keeping users within its walled garden.

Regards...jmcc

[Micha]

And we all know what happened to AOL: megalomania eventually consumes a company. What's more, the AI hype is still a bubble, and even Bill Gates said a few days ago that when it bursts, some large companies will fall. Well, Bill is often wrong, but I agree with him on this point.

Let's talk about traffic: it increased on the news page yesterday evening, and today there is Discover traffic, although I currently consider this to be more of a coincidence. However, the shop experienced a rush of visitors last night and achieved a daily record within four hours. It's still early in the morning, but the sales figures are already looking good again. And most of them came, surprise surprise, via Google.

[jmccormac]

@Micha Yes. Google was once a search engine and had the motto "Don't be evil." It changed from being search engine busienss to being an advertising business a long time ago. Some of the parallels with AOL are even more worrying for Google supporters in that AOL became dependent on its subscriptions and advertising to its subscribers. Google deoends on a kind of "subscriptions" (Adwords/Gmail/its MSFT Office effort/Youtube) and advertising revenue from Adsense ad ads on its SERPs. Its mobile phone business also relies on its core "subscriptions" to some extent in that it is almost like those AOL CD-ROMs driving users to Google's main advertising services.

In terms of traffic, volume is still low and Adsense is dire. Might as well take this opportunity to upgrade the site's server.

Regards...jmcc

[RedBar]

Although I didn't think I had made any significant changes to my htaccess files I have to say, at the moment, my traffic is looking much cleaner and more "normal" across all sites. Notably, fingers crossed, my Singaporean issues have almost abated to the point it is hardly registering ... We'll see.

My mainland China traffic is consistent every day, the same half-a-dozen large companies in my early hours visit, check the home page is there and then leave. China's a big export market for us therefore we do not see this as any problem. Is Singapore now adopting the same home page only visit, maybe?

I'm expecting the UK economy to officially enter recession, the construction industry here is in an almighty mess!

[mosxu]

Where is the traffic ? What is happening ?

[christianz]

Traffic is already gone for months and nothing is happening.

[mosxu]

Never seen such gross manipulation

[universenet]

it will happen in January, when google will be fined by the EU

[jmccormac]

This purely speculation. One potential effect of Google's stuffing of SERPs pages with its own ads and AI "contribution" has pushed the results from real sites down the page. Even though sites rank for specific keywords, the results are pushed down the pages because the ranking software ignores the adverts and the AI block in the page. Does ranking software take into account how a page looks to a human rather than a bot?

Regards...jmcc

[RedBar]

Absolutely jmcc, I have been commenting on this for years now. Google Classified Ads plus localisation of results really came into force about 10 years ago and if they were allowed to they would not have any organics on the first page for in-demand keyword ads.

Interestingly I see in my industry that outside of the top 10-20 keywords, ranking top 3 is easy for me plus, even though there are thousands of extremely popular widgets, no one, and I am being serious, no one targets them ... Certainly Google is not going to suggest them because they want everyone to compete for the most expensive keywords.

It's a complete manipulation con yet they get away with it because most advertisers are too dumb to see what is actually happening and especially so the younger advertising departments through lack of experience.

[Samsam1978]

They will see when they don't have any sales. ROI must be the lowerst in the entire internet history.

[shadowlight]

it will happen in January, when google will be fined by the EU

Fines are just a cost of doing business for G and they will employ the same strategy as always by appealing.

90% down in traffic, still top result, AI slop being promoted

Top result with 90% decrease in traffic, says it all about the current state of affairs.

[RedBar]

Oh, did MSFT stop paying its power bills for 4.0 and 20.0 IP ranges in AU, JP, KR and US and allow IE to start?

A sudden stoppage Friday into Saturday for all my sites with only a couple of them affected Saturday into Suday however a noticeable visit from 13.0 from Ireland for one site only.

Otherwise traffic looked normal, especially so for my global widget site, which would seem to be "not normal" considering a major update. How many of us will see any semblance of normality until 5th January 2026?

[Martin Ice Web]

Most of the bots are gone since the CU started. So google is responsible for the bots, no doubt.

Worst weekend regarding google traffic/sales since a long,long time. Amazon sales picked up again since friday.
Amazon sales are rising since google started this mess in summer.
And I see that i changed my behaviour when searching: completly disregarding google, instead looking at amazon and idealo.
The pitty is, that i don´t want to buy at amazon because you know. Support the small resellers. Unfortunatelly this is not longer possible with current serps ( google + bing)

[Micha]

@martin That's right, it's amazingly quiet in terms of bots; they've practically disappeared from my pages since Friday. And I agree with you: I'm also ignoring Google (Bing, etc.) more and more. Poor results and advertising are just not helpful.

Otherwise, I can't complain at the moment; visitor numbers to my news site are rising again and RPM is also recovering. It's strange with the shop. Since Friday, we've had one sales record after another, and oddly enough, it's the slow-moving items that are selling. But hey, money is money.

Oh, and the update seems to be pushing subdomains full of advertising to the top. Didn't Google used to penalise those?

[RedBar]

So far today I'm at 50/50 wih probots (probing robots). MSFT is still probing domains that have zero pages, only one email account, plus being joined by both Google and Amazon again on other sites.

What amazes me is my webhost's attitude when I point out that after two weeks of December I have one site that has used 25% of its 2025 bandwidth solely through MSFT WP probots, they're not bothered.

[jmccormac]

@RedBar In some respects, Google would probably want to be a PPC search engine but the regulators would not accept that given its market dominance. Much of the traffic from those WP probes results in 404s. Some of the bots will test to see if there is a website on a domain name rather than probing for vulnerabilities.There are different kinds of bots. Some probe for vulnerabilities. Others scrape content. And some are relatively benign in that they are just checking to see that a website exists on a domain name. The registries run their own crawlers for this purpose.

@Martin Most of the bots from MSFT ranges are probes for vulnerabilities. The IP ranges tend to get blocked on a rolling basis and this tends to drive the maggots from range to range. The upside for site owners is that it lights up bad neigbourhoods (in terms of a lack of control and traffic) enabling those ranges to be blocked.

Traffic seems to have improved today. Not sure if it will stay that way though.

Regards...jmcc

[ichthyous]

My site seems to be "recovering" in that the steady decline in top 3 ranking terms has finally turned around, but USA traffic is atrocious. It's getting to be far below last year's traffic, and the single highest traffic page on my site has mysteriously lost about a third of its daily traffic despite no change in ranking. Every day something new, with traffic from different countries vanishing for a day, to traffic to various categories on my site dropping one day and returning the next. It is all very unstable, and seemingly not correlated to visibility like it used to be.

[samwest]

Hey all - long time no see! Looks like I'm not missing anything, same old same old.
From my end, it's gotten so bad, I've been clinging by a thread just to pay just the hosting fees, so I went to an unmanaged VPS with CyberPanel...that setup made it 3 months before it corrupted its own Django. I wiped the server again and rebuilt it with Unbuntu 24.04 and aaPanel...which has it's own lovely quirks, but is finally stable...so, the bottom line is even though I've been down for weeks (on and off) it wouldn't have matter becuase traffic is all ZOMBIE again, and in some cases, we're not even seening Zombies anymore.
25+ years online, and it seems nothing will ever improve. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!