As the dust settles on the December 2025 core update, the SEO community is busy dissecting its impact. To help us make sense of the volatility, we’re joined by Anastasia Braitsik, a leading expert in digital marketing and data analytics who has been tracking these shifts for years. Her insights cut through the noise, offering clarity on what really matters for sustainable ranking. In our conversation, Anastasia unpacks the key moments of the 18-day rollout, contextualizes the five-month gap since the last update, and provides a clear, actionable framework for site owners who saw their rankings drop. We also explore the nuances of recovering from an update and look ahead to what Google’s focus on “satisfying content” might mean for the future of SEO.
The December 2025 update officially ran for 18 days, yet you noted significant volatility spikes around December 13th and 20th. Based on your data, what did these specific spikes signify, and what types of sites or content categories appeared to be most affected during those key moments?
Those spikes were fascinating because they really illustrate that a core update isn’t a single switch being flipped; it’s a massive, rolling wave. The initial touchdown on December 13th felt like the first major shockwave hitting the search results. This is when we saw broad, initial shifts across the board as the update began its propagation. The second big spike, right around December 20th, likely represented a more significant adjustment phase. This could have been the update rolling out to more data centers globally or the algorithm fine-tuning its new weightings based on the initial impact. Google’s statement that the update was for “all types of sites” rang true; we didn’t see one industry get singled out. Instead, it was a site-by-site re-evaluation, where some saw huge gains while others experienced devastating drops seemingly overnight.
This update arrived after a five-month gap, which is longer than some previous intervals. How does this longer development period compare to past updates, and what might this cadence suggest about Google’s internal testing and deployment strategies for its core ranking systems?
That five-month gap between the June and December updates is incredibly significant. If you look back, the period between the March and June updates was shorter. This longer pause strongly suggests that Google is moving toward fewer, but more substantial and complex, updates. It feels less like a routine refresh and more like a carefully orchestrated architectural change to their systems. A five-month window gives their engineers ample time for extensive internal testing and quality assurance, ensuring that an update of this magnitude doesn’t break the search experience. It implies that they are bundling more significant changes into each rollout, aiming for a greater impact on their goal of surfacing “relevant, satisfying content” rather than just making minor tweaks every couple of months.
Google’s advice is to create “helpful, reliable, people-first content.” For a site owner who believes they are already doing this but was negatively impacted, what are the first three practical, step-by-step actions they should take to diagnose a potential mismatch with Google’s quality expectations?
It’s a gut-wrenching feeling to be hit when you believe you’re doing everything right. The first step is to breathe and resist the urge to make frantic, wholesale changes. Google itself has stated that a negative impact might not mean anything is fundamentally “wrong” with your pages; it’s about a relative re-ranking of the entire web. Second, you need to conduct an honest, objective audit using Google’s own list of questions as your guide. Don’t just check boxes; truly put yourself in the user’s shoes. Is your content genuinely the most helpful and reliable answer out there, or just a good one? Finally, shift your entire mindset from “writing for Google” to “solving for people.” This means deeply understanding user intent and creating content that is so satisfying and comprehensive that a user has no reason to go back to the search results. That’s the core of the “people-first” philosophy.
The article notes that major recovery often waits for a subsequent core update. Can you share an anecdote of a site that achieved measurable ranking improvements between official updates, and what specific on-page or technical improvements likely contributed to that positive shift?
Absolutely. While it’s true that the most dramatic recoveries happen during the next core update, incremental progress is entirely possible. I worked with a site that was hit hard by the June 2025 update. Instead of just waiting, we immediately began a deep content overhaul. We focused on strengthening their expertise signals, adding unique data to their articles, and rewriting introductions to be more direct and helpful. Over the following months, we saw a slow but undeniable positive trend in their search visibility and keyword rankings. It wasn’t a full recovery, but it was a measurable improvement. This proves that Google’s systems are constantly re-evaluating content. When you make substantial, tangible improvements to how helpful and people-first your pages are, the systems can and do take notice, rewarding you with small gains that often precede that big recovery during the next official update.
What is your forecast for Google’s core updates in the next year? Considering the pattern of three major updates in 2025 and the focus on “satisfying content,” what major themes or shifts in ranking factors do you anticipate we will see?
My forecast is that we’ll continue on this trajectory of fewer, but more potent, core updates—likely two or three major ones again next year. The central theme will absolutely remain “satisfying content,” but I predict Google will get far more sophisticated in how it measures that satisfaction. It will move beyond simply analyzing the text on a page and lean more heavily into signals that reflect a truly positive user experience. This could mean a greater emphasis on things like content depth, demonstrated expertise, and how well a page fulfills a user’s entire need, not just their initial query. The focus will be on rewarding content that ends the user’s search journey, leaving them feeling completely fulfilled and informed.
