Right, so your website traffic’s tanked and you’re wondering what the hell happened. Join the club. Google’s been making some massive changes over the past couple of months, and a lot of site owners are absolutely fuming. Let me break down what actually went on.

The December Core Update: Cheers for That, Google

On 11th December, right when everyone was trying to finish up for Christmas, Google decided to release a massive algorithm update. Because nothing says “happy holidays” like watching your traffic disappear whilst you’re meant to be enjoying mince pies.

The rollout went on for 18 days, finally wrapping up on 29th December. Third core update of 2025, and absolutely one of the most brutal since March 2024. Every type of site got caught up in it.

Who Got Absolutely Hammered

Wikipedia lost over 435 visibility points. Wikipedia. Let that sink in. If Google’s willing to tank Wikipedia’s rankings, nobody’s safe.

Health publishers got destroyed. Proper publishers who’ve been around for years, gone. Major sites losing 20+ visibility points and hitting their lowest scores ever.

News sites? Still falling off a cliff. Social platforms took a kicking. Forums all over the place. Basically, if you publish anything online, chances are you got smacked.

The only ones laughing were ecommerce and retail brands. After getting beaten up for most of 2024 and early 2025, they actually did alright this time. Apparel, real estate, sports fitness… all saw decent gains.

What Were They Actually After?

Google’s official explanation was the usual meaningless drivel about “surfacing more relevant, satisfying content.” Brilliant. Really cleared that up, cheers.

But if you look at what actually survived versus what got destroyed, it’s pretty obvious. They’re serious about this E-E-A-T thing now: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Sites with actual experts writing about things they know got through okay. Generic rubbish written by someone who’s clearly just rewriting Wikipedia? Dead.

And the AI content? Look, Google says AI isn’t banned, and that’s technically true. But if you’ve been churning out 50 articles a day using ChatGPT with zero editing, you’re toast. Absolute toast.

The Sneaky Updates They Don’t Tell You About

Want to know something infuriating? Google’s now confirmed they push smaller updates all the time without telling anyone. All through autumn 2025, sites were seeing wild swings in traffic. No announcement. No explanation. Just your rankings going mental whilst you’re sat there wondering if you’ve done something wrong.

These “smaller core updates” can still absolutely batter your traffic. Google just doesn’t bother mentioning them. So when your rankings tank on a random Tuesday in October, good luck figuring out why.

January 2026: More of the Same

January brought more emphasis on the same themes. Google’s continuing to reward sites that demonstrate genuine topical authority rather than just ranking individual pages in isolation.

Strong internal linking, content clusters, and consistent publishing within your niche matter more than ever. Google’s looking at your entire site, not just individual articles.

User behaviour signals are also playing a bigger role. Things like engagement, scroll depth, and how people actually interact with your pages influence rankings. If people click through and immediately bounce back to Google, that’s a problem.

AI Overviews Are Killing Everyone

This deserves its own section because it’s absolutely brutal. AI Overviews are now showing up in twice as many searches as they were a year ago. And they’re destroying click through rates.

Here’s the nightmare scenario: your article ranks number one. Perfect, right? Except Google’s AI Overview has already answered the question at the top of the page. So the user gets their answer, doesn’t click anything, and you get precisely nothing. No traffic. No ad revenue. No sales. Nothing.

Publishers are calling these “zero click searches” and it’s as bad as it sounds. Your rankings might be fine, but your traffic’s still down because nobody’s actually clicking through anymore. Fantastic.

What Google’s Removing in January

In a slightly positive development, Google’s simplifying things by removing some lesser used features. Starting in January 2026, they’re ditching support for certain structured data types that nobody really used anyway.

Practice problems, dataset markup for Google Search (still works for Dataset Search, mind you), and a few other bits and pieces are getting the chop. This won’t affect rankings, but it will affect how some results appear and what you can track in Search Console.

If you’ve got structured data on your site that’s about to become obsolete, now’s the time to clean it up.

What You Should Actually Do About It

Alright, enough doom and gloom. What do you actually do if you’ve been hit?

Stop worrying about whether AI wrote your content. Google genuinely doesn’t care. They care if it’s useful. Using AI to help write good content? Fine. Using it to pump out 50 identical articles that say nothing? Not fine. Pretty simple really.

Expertise actually matters now. You can’t just rewrite three other articles and call it a day. You need to know what you’re talking about. Real examples. Specific details. Stuff that shows you’ve actually done the thing you’re writing about, not just Googled it.

Think bigger than individual articles. One great post won’t cut it anymore. You need to cover topics comprehensively. Multiple articles, all linking together sensibly, showing Google that you’re not just churning out random content but actually building genuine expertise in your area.

And sort out your technical stuff. Page speed, mobile experience, all that boring technical SEO you’ve been ignoring? Yeah, it matters. Sites that load slowly got hit harder than fast sites with similar content. No getting around it.

How Long Until Things Get Better?

Here’s the bit nobody wants to hear: recovery takes ages. Most sites need 2 to 6 months before they see proper improvement. If you’re in health, finance, or legal (what Google calls YMYL), you’re looking at 6 to 12 months. Maybe longer.

You can make improvements now and see gradual gains from those smaller updates Google doesn’t announce. But full recovery? That usually needs the next big core update. Looking at 2025’s pattern (March, June, December), the next one’s probably March or April 2026.

So yeah. Buckle in. This isn’t getting fixed overnight.

The Honest Truth

Look, Google’s making it pretty clear where this is all going. They’re done rewarding sites that game the system. If your whole strategy was based on SEO tricks rather than actually being useful, you’re screwed.

Keyword stuffing? Dead. Buying old domains for backlinks? Dead. Pumping out barely coherent AI content? Completely dead.

The sites doing well now are the ones with actual expertise, genuinely helpful content, and decent user experience. Which sounds lovely until you realise you’ve built your entire business on the opposite of that.

If your traffic’s down, don’t just sit there hoping it’ll magically come back. Look at your content honestly. Is it actually useful, or did you write it purely to rank? Does it show real expertise, or is it just regurgitated nonsense from other sites?

Because here’s the thing: Google’s algorithms have got smart enough to spot the difference now. And they’re not going back. The days of easy SEO wins are over. Either adapt or watch your traffic continue disappearing.

Not exactly comforting, but at least you know where you stand.