Forums › Forums › White Hat SEO › Any SEO surprises during the Google Dec 2025 algorithm update? › Reply To: Any SEO surprises during the Google Dec 2025 algorithm update?
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Smart_Cauliflower779
GuestDecember 24, 2025 at 2:06 pmTo be honest It’s all going to shit since HCU 2023, I’m trying to fix our reviews as they are very bad 50/50 split between 5 stars and 1 stars. Other than that, my websites are fully functional, no 404s, fast as hell, helpful non AI content. correct strutured data, good interlinking, optimized titles etc etc. 20.000 products over 4 countries. Whatever we do, nothing seems to work. We just quit linkbuilding with a very sizeable budget as it doesn’t seem to do shit anymore, these are highly acclaimed websites with long histories from newspapers to niche websites.
My last hope lies is fixing our online reputation/reviews. If that doesn’t work I’m probably going to quit SEO for good and start doing things actually help the world become a bit better.
Seems to me that entities and their reputation/positive user signals/reviews are the ultimate arbiter wether you’re being ranked highly or not.