Here we go again!
Just one week after the November 2024 Core Update finished rolling out Google announced the… December 2024 Core Update!
The Dec. 2024 core update is rolling out, and we expect it will complete in two weeks.
If you’re wondering why there’s a core update this month after one last month, we have different core systems we’re always improving. This past blog post explains more: https://t.co/N5p3KsJyiI— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 12, 2024
Saying it would take two weeks to roll out the search engine finished rolling it out in less than a week. Which is also roughly the same amount of time it takes a Chia pet to grow.
The rollout was complete as of December 18, 2024.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 18, 2024
How are you supposed to decouple this volatility from not only the November 2024 Core Update but also the uncomfortable volatility around both core updates… and the December 2024 Spam Update (yeah, that too)?
I hear you. Even I had a hard time.
Let’s dig in.
Analyzing the Impact and Trends of the December 2024 Core Update
I feel like I just did this. That’s right I did. And like the November 2024 Core Update we walked into the December 2024 Core Update with volatility already spiking per the Semrush Sensor:
Between the two updates there was a lull in the volatility so everyone could collect their collective breaths (you can breathe out now). This lull lasted a whopping 5 days before volatility hit what has become its normal highs.
However, unlike the November 2024 Core Update the peak levels of volatility seen during the December 2024 Core Update exceeded preupdate volatility:
In this way, at least, the December 2024 Core Update was a bit of a return to normal in terms of what we typically see during an update.
Like the graph above, the levels of peak volatility were higher during the December 2024 Core Update across the board.
Peak volatility way back in November (that’s a joke) was at 5.8 while during the December 2024 Core Update we saw volatility hit 8.5. That’s a hefty difference with some verticals like Real Estate and Health seeing double (or in the case of the Real Estate vertical, more than double) the level of volatility than present during the November update.
That’s something to take note of. We jumped from a volatility level of 5.5/10 to 8/5/10 in a relatively short amount of time.
It could be, and this is just a theory, that the shorter roll-out seen during the December 2024 Core Update produced a more concentrated “series” of volatility.
Because the overall volatility picture in aggregate (as this data is normalized and meant to signify broad trends, not what happened with a certain set or set of sites) is far more complicated to decipher.
This leads us to the change in volatility seen during the update relative to the pre-update baseline period. Which I hesitate to share with you.
I almost did not want to include the data here. In fact, when I sent over a data summary to Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz, I purposely left the data on the change in volatility out.
A lot of the reason for this is what I spoke about in my analysis from the November and August 2024 Core Updates. These past few updates have seen a tremendous amount of volatility preupdate (and often post-update). That makes pulling out the volatility associated with the core update itself much more difficult. Part of this, as I’ve mentioned in the past, is that the “volatility change metric” relies on having a baseline period of relative volatility calm.
In data collection we like to be as consistent as possible. In this case, it’s quite important. Overall levels of volatility change. What’s considered “normal” levels of volatility during one time period might be high (or low) levels relative to another period. This is why we like to use the days leading up to the core update as the baseline.
Again, we’re trying to measure the change in volatility and that’s all relative to the overall volatility context. An update might take volatility from being a 3/10 to 4/10 on the scale – a point increase. A different update might take volatility from being 6/10 to a 7/10 – again a one point increase. From the perspective of change relative to the norm both updates are equal despite the higher overall volatility in the latter case.
In the past, this hasn’t been a problem. But with volatility surrounding the updates and with one update following the next update – this collection of data can get mighty tricky.
In fact, the only reason I share the chart below is to highlight just how tricky things are right now when analyzing and most of all comparing Google updates (and if anyone says otherwise, I’d be suspect):
The data above shows that the November 2024 Core Update was 2.8 points less volatile than the baseline period that directly preceded it. If you look at the chart it would seemingly say that the December 2024 Core Update was far more powerful since it was 1.7 points more volatile than its baseline period.
It could be that the December 2024 Core Update was indeed more potent. But this chart can’t tell you that.
If you’ll recall, earlier I shared a chart of the volatility trends over time. For convenience sake, here is that data once again:
Notice, the pre-volatility of the November 2024 Core Update was unusually high. Which explains the 2.8 point volatility decrease I mentioned.
The baseline for the December 2024 Core Update was lower than the update per se, which explains the 1.7 point increase. With volatility having various levels and waves it’s hard to use this data to really compare the two updates.
A far better measurement in this case might be the average positioned a URL gained/lost during the December Core Update 2024 compared to the November 2024 Core Update:
Here we saw a slight increase in the average rank fluctuation. The December Core Update 2024 resulted in a gain/loss of circa 2.8 positions whereas the November Core Update 2024 saw about a 2.5 gain/loss. A marginal increase.
At the same time though, the overall severity or “drasticness” of the rank fluctuations seems to have been lower, significantly, during the December 2024 Core Update.
How so? The number of new URLs that prior to the December 2024 Core Update didn’t manage to crack the top 20 positions but did post update… went down relative to the November update:
That’s down from 33% of new URLs in the top 20 during the November Core 2024 Update. Meaning, there were less ranking swaps during the December 2024 Core Update that saw new URLs gain visibility among the top 20 positions relative to the November Core 2024 Update.
This pattern continued when looking at the very top of the SERP:
Back during the November 2024 Core Update over 9% of the top 5 results did not rank top 20 proper to the update. This figure saw a noticeable decrease during the December 2024 Core Update dropping almost 3 percentage points (a decrease of around 30%).
From what the overall data says the impact of the December 2024 Core Update at the top of the SERP was perhaps less drastic. At the same time, with the average position gain/loss being higher there may have been an overall increase in rank movement.
Similarly, there was an overall spike in the levels of volatility as compared to the November 2024 Core Update. With that, the lead into the December 2024 Core Update showed higher volatility. So how much of the volatility levels seen during the core update were related to the core update per se (working with Google’s official statement that the volatility seen before the official announcement is not part of the update)?
Not that this matters from a perception point of view (as in how volatile did the update feel) and from a practical ranking point of view. Rank loss or gain is loss or gain no matter if the root cause was the official update or some sort of associated volatility.
Looking at the peak levels of volatility it may have certainly felt that the December 2024 Core Update had a much more significant impact.
More Updates, More Often
Well, Google was true to their word. More algorithm updates, more often. On December 13th it was reported that Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, indicated Google would be rolling out core updates more frequently. Truer words.
Danny was quoted as saying that Google plans on making updates “routine and continuous.”This is something I, and other SEOs, have thought to be coming for a good while now. Should it be the case that the algorithm resets on a constant and continuous basis the entire way we think about tracking both updates and even rank overall could need revisiting.
As Danny Sullivan previously stated, “buckle up.”
