Google has one new kernel update, called Google December 2020, which the company says will have a bigger impact on search results than the last core update released in May 2020.
The most important updates from Google are released every three months. However, December 2020 took seven months to complete, which means that it is a major update.
The Google December 2020 update was released on the day 3rd of Decemberalthough its results were not noticed until the next day. According to the company, the effects of this update will be felt in the weeks following its launch, when it affects all of the pages that appear in search results.
Like the May 2020 core update, it is a core update that affects everyone, not just a region, language, or category of websites. Google usually releases one of these updates every three months. However, it took seven months to publish in December 2020. Therefore, it should be much more extensive than the previous ones.
As usual with these types of kernel updates, google does not provide any information about the changes made. However, analysts and traffic experts have determined that this particularly affects the initial results from the Google SERP page, as can be seen in the following image from Rankranger, which analyzed the fluctuations in the positions of the SERPs:
With that in mind, the data suggests that the top position fluctuations were found on pages with topics such as real estate, travel, finance, education, pets, work, health, legality, and government pages. Everything seems to suggest that this update is specifically targeting those niches where Google understands the importance of complying with EAT as many of them require a professional or expert opinion.
At the moment, the information varies a lot as the update has not yet been fully implemented. For example, some users are seeing a loss of up to 40% of Google’s organic traffic, while others have seen a growth of more than 100%. This means you’ll have to wait to see the real effects.
