"It is January 2026, and it is now time for the monthly Google Webmaster report, where I recap the most important Google organic stories of the past month. Obviously, the Google December 2025 core update was the big one, it ran for 18 days and it really had a large impact on many sites - more on that below. Google once again confirmed it does smaller, unannounced core updates and cannot pre-announce them."
"Google released Gemini 3 Flash in AI Mode but the horrific AI-Frankenstein recipe results scared many of us off. Google keeps pushing AI Mode in various ways including + signs, with new links and introductions and we also had link AI-generated snippets and AI-powered article overviews. Search traffic to news publishers continues to dwindle, not just because of the core update."
The December 2025 core update ran for 18 days and produced large impacts across many sites. Google confirmed it issues smaller, unannounced core updates and cannot pre-announce them. Google released Gemini 3 Flash in AI Mode and introduced multiple AI-driven features, including AI-generated snippets and AI-powered article overviews, while some AI outputs caused concern. Search traffic to news publishers continued to decline, and Googlers stated SEO for AI aligns with traditional search SEO; Discover was described as minimally aligned to search rankings. Search Console received an AI-powered configurator, social channel Insights, and data reports stabilized. Preferred sources expanded globally, the Web guide moved to the All tab as opt-in, review appeals experienced delays, and Google sued SerpApi for scraping results.
#december-2025-core-update #google-ai--gemini-3-flash #search-console-updates #news-publisher-traffic-decline
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