Any SEO surprises during the Google Dec 2025 algorithm update?

[Smart_Cauliflower779]

To 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.

[7_Eagles]

What you’re seeing actually lines up with what we’ve noticed on a few B2B / IT sites too.

The spike in impressions + drop in avg position usually means Google is testing your pages for a wider set of queries. You’re showing up more often, but not always in the top slots yet. That’s why impressions go up while clicks stay flat.

Here are few suggestions that might help you to stay stabilized:

1.Check GSC queries where impressions jumped but CTR dropped. This signals intent mismatch or weaker titles/meta.

2.Pages ranking for broader keywords now may need clearer topical focus (tighten H2s, examples, use-case depth).

3.If competitors added fresher content in Dec, that can push positions down even if relevance is fine.

It’s too early to get panic. If impressions are rising, it’s usually a sign Google still “likes” the content, it’s just recalibrating where it belongs. Give it another few weeks and optimize for the new queries showing up.

[PDFBearSupport]

We should all revert back to this post January when everyone is back on their computers. There are certain industries that experience a natural seasonal dip. It may be what we are experiencing OR google really came around with the core update to make confusion.

[the-furry]

Impresions are going up

[Mohit007kumar]

I saw the same thing on my tech blog – impressions shot up big time since early December, but clicks stayed pretty flat and positions dropped a bit. Kinda weird right? But heres what I think, Google is showing our pages to way more people now, maybe pushing them higher in some searches or adding them to AI overviews, but the titles or snippets just arent grabbing clicks like before. For IT stuff, people skim fast, so I started tweaking my meta descriptions to sound more like real talk from someone whos been there, not just keywords. Give that a try, it helped my CTR bounce back a little already. Hang in there!

[FishermanTechnical79]

Many businesses, B2B or to C are seasonal, it’s usually impossible to accurately judge true impact of an update at this time of year as typically traffic and conversions decline quite dramatically in December anyway.

I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary at this point, though I have seen one major competitor lose significant positions on some key terms which is quite surprising. Still time to rebound though, things are still rolling out. 

[BetGuruBrasil]

I handle a site of sports news + pronostics + igaming affiliation, and this update is being hard for us. We had a massive drop in impressions and a drop in clicks as well. The site has been around for more than 13 years, but the last year has been harder to make money. We are also investing in other channels, such as social media, because the iGaming affiliate market is extremely competitive and challenging to secure positions and make money.

[vaibhav_mahajan]

After the December 2025 update, many sites saw increased volatility and ranking fluctuations.
Google seemed to reward clearer intent, better content quality, and real user value.
This reinforced sticking to core SEO fundamentals, which teams like SEO Discovery also follow in practice.

[Wooden-Roll1283]

This could also be due to AI Overviews appearing above organic results, impressions go up but clicks don’t – visibility shifts to AI answers instead of links.

[humptyeyebrows]

Not for now