Search Drops Doubled During Google’s December 2025 Core Update, but Many Sites Recovered by January
Diib compared Google search traffic on 34,918 websites before and during Google's December 2025 core update. 6.5% had a sharp search-only drop, about twice the normal rate, but December 2024 looked the same and 38% were back to normal by mid-January.
If your Google search traffic fell in mid-to-late December 2025, the holidays may explain as much as Google's core update: drops that month were far more likely than usual to bounce back by mid-January. A loss that was still there in late January is the one worth investigating.
Sharp search traffic losses were about twice as common as usual during Google’s December 2025 core update: 6.5% of websites in Diib’s data lost 30% or more of their Google search visits in the two weeks after it started, against 2.3–4.8% in update-free periods. But the timing points at the holidays as much as at this Google search algorithm update, which rolled out December 11–29, 2025.
What Diib measured
We compared each website’s unpaid Google search visits in the 14 days before the update (November 27–December 10) with the 14 days from its start (December 11–24), for 34,918 sites with complete daily data and at least 150 search visits beforehand. A site counted as a drop if search visits fell 30% or more while direct visits (people typing the address or using a bookmark) held within 30%, which filters out tracking problems and outages. The baseline is seven update-free periods from October 2025 to January 2026.
| Period (start date) | Sites | Search visits down 30%+, direct steady |
|---|---|---|
| December 2025 core update (Dec. 11) | 34,918 | 6.5% |
| Weeks with no update (7 periods) | 34,642–35,694 | 2.3%–4.8% |
| Same weeks in 2024 (Dec. 11)* | 33,852 | 6.3% |
Holidays, the update, or both?
The extra drops didn’t arrive when the rollout began. Measured week by week, 3.7% of sites dropped in the first week (December 11–17), close to the week before (3.9%). The jump came December 18–24, at 7.0%. December 2024 looked almost the same, led by the same industries: business and industrial (8.0% this time, 7.3% a year earlier, 2.6% normally), home and garden (8.6%, 8.6%, 2.7%) and jobs and education (10.0%, 7.9%, 2.7%).
Six weeks later
Many drops were temporary. Of 2,247 dropped sites with complete data, 38% were back within 10% of normal in days 29–42 (January 8–21, 2026) and 45% were still down by a quarter or more, against 62% still down after an ordinary October 2025 period and 68% after 2026’s updates (see Diib’s look at recovery after Google updates). The typical dropped site went from 64% of its usual search visits to 79%.
What this data can’t tell you
Timing doesn’t prove the update caused any single drop, and we can’t fully separate it from the holiday slowdown: the rollout ran through Christmas, and the 2024 comparison overlapped Google updates too. Core updates can also shift rankings by less than 30%. For later updates, see what businesses need to know about Google’s 2026 updates, or the history of Google algorithm updates.
Source: View the original source