Google announced the December 2025 core update on December 11 and marked it complete on the Search Status Dashboard on December 29, 2025, after 18 days and 2 hours. Google said the rollout "may take up to 3 weeks", and it nearly used all of them. It was the third and final core update of 2025, following the March and June core updates.
As a broad core update, it was a general reassessment of content quality rather than a targeted action: nothing specific to fix, and no penalty to lift. Its timing drew attention because the rollout covered the peak holiday shopping weeks, a period in which Google had historically avoided major ranking changes.
If your site moved in the December 11-29 window, Google's standing guidance for core updates applies: audit the pages that lost visibility against the self-assessment questions in the core updates documentation and invest in overall helpfulness; meaningful recovery typically registers at a future core update. Our recovery guide covers the sequence.