Search Drops Tripled Around Google’s December 2024 Updates, but Most Looked Like a Holiday Dip
Diib compared Google search traffic on 33,903 websites around Google's December 2024 core and spam updates. 8.1% had a sharp search-only drop, about three times normal, but a similar jump appeared in December 2023 with no core or spam update, and most sites recovered at least partly by mid-January.
A December dip in Google search traffic is common whether or not Google is updating, and most sites that dropped in December 2024 were back near normal by mid-January. Judge a holiday-season update against your own numbers from the same weeks a year earlier, not against November.
In Diib’s data, 8.1% of websites had a sharp drop in Google search visits in the two weeks after Google’s December 2024 core update started, about three times the 1.8–2.9% of two-week stretches with no update. But a similar jump showed up in December 2023, when no core or spam update was rolling out, and most sites that dropped had recovered at least partly by mid-January.
What Diib measured
The core update ran December 12–18, 2024, and the spam update December 19–26, so we measured them together. We compared each website’s unpaid Google search visits in the 14 days before (November 28–December 11) with the 14 days from December 12, for 33,903 sites with complete daily data and at least 150 search visits beforehand. A site counted as a drop if its search visits fell 30% or more while its direct visits (people typing the address or using a bookmark) held within 30% of normal, which filters out tracking problems and outages. The baseline is six update-free periods from September 2024 to January 2025.
| Period (start date) | Sites | Search visits down 30%+, direct steady |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 core update (Dec. 12) | 33,903 | 8.1% |
| December 2024 spam update (Dec. 19) | 33,793 | 9.2% |
| Weeks with no update (6 periods) | 33,023–35,616 | 1.8%–2.9% |
| November 2024 core update (Nov. 11) | 33,620 | 2.1% |
| Same weeks in 2023, no core or spam update (Dec. 12) | 785 | 6.5% |
Why the holidays matter here
The typical website had 85% of its usual search visits in the two weeks from December 12, against 97–109% in update-free periods. Business and industrial sites (11.1% of 4,969, against 2.3% normally) and jobs and education sites (11.2%) dropped most often; auto and travel sites least (3.2% and 4.3%). December 2025, which had its own core update, showed the same industries dropping most (see Diib’s December 2025 core update data; holiday weeks are sensitive to exact dates, so its figures use a slightly different window). That fits a holiday slowdown in work-related searches at least as well as it fits the updates.
Six weeks later
Of the 2,755 sites that dropped, 45% were back within 10% of normal in days 29–42 after December 12 (January 9–22, 2025), and 35% were still down by a quarter or more. After drops in update-free periods, only 12–17% got back to normal and 68–80% stayed down, the pattern in Diib’s look at recovery after Google updates.
What this data can’t tell you
Timing alone doesn’t prove either update caused any single drop, and a seasonal dip can hide a real ranking loss. The before period also overlapped the end of the November 2024 core update and Thanksgiving, and the 2023 comparison covers far fewer sites. See all of Diib’s Google update coverage, or the history of Google algorithm updates for earlier years.
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