December 2025 update from Google, analysis of the impact in Italy
Eighteen days of rollout, a seismic “tremor” that disrupted SERPs without particularly high peaks, and a conclusion that came just in time to close out the year. Google’s December 2025 Core Update started on December 11 and ended on December 29, 2025, confirming the search engine team’s tendency to intervene during periods of high commercial and traffic intensity.
Although Google called it a “regular” update to improve the quality of results, the impact on Italian SERPs was visible and, in some sectors, decidedly marked. Let’s analyze in detail what happened, cross-referencing data from our Observatory with international evidence.
What was the December 2025 Core Update like and what was seen in Italian SERPs?
Let’s start with the basic data.
The Google December 2025 Core Update was officially released on December 11, 2025, and completed its rollout on December 29, 2025, for a total duration of 18 days. This is the third major update of the year, and also the one with the longest distribution window among the core updates of 2025, arriving at a time of maximum pressure for commercial and informational traffic, right in the peak season and in the middle of the holidays.
But be careful not to stop at the “official” dates, because the long wave of the adjustment has crossed the border of the new year, with significant movements recorded to date. These elements already provide an initial interpretation: Google has worked on multiple systems in a progressive manner, without concentrating the effect in a single moment of adjustment.
Data from the SEOZoom Observatory shows an update that has had a cross-cutting impact, with visible movements on both very high Zoom Authority domains and medium and vertical projects. However, it was not a “noisy” update in the classic sense – no sudden earthquake, no textbook before and after. Volatility changed as a result of progressive reallocations, with measurable effects on rankings, top 10 keywords, and traffic estimates. This is precisely why it is interesting, because the most significant movements are not in obvious collapses, but in progressive shifts, often within huge domains, which we normally consider stable by definition.
When sites with very high Zoom Authority move, even by just one point, it is never a marginal event: it is a sign that Google is recalibrating balances that carry weight, and it does so by redistributing space, not by rewarding or punishing in a dramatic way. That is where it is worth looking.
All the data from the Google December Core Update
To understand the real scope of this intervention, we need to look inside the “black box” of volatility recorded by our sensors, thanks to the graph of the renewed SEOZoom Observatory, which shows us an irregular distribution of intensity.
The first movements become evident between December 13 and 14, when several domains begin to record consistent variations on high-volume keywords. A second phase of intense activity is concentrated around December 20, when we detect a sharp peak in volatility, with simultaneous shifts across multiple sectors.
In the final days of the rollout, between December 24 and 29, the trend gradually stabilizes. The SERPs stop fluctuating widely and begin to consolidate the new positions. This behavior confirms a dynamic already observed in previous large-scale updates: first redistribution, then consolidation. The changes detected in January are consistent with what emerged in the middle of the update, a sign that the main movements were defined during the rollout and not after.
The update as seen by foreign analysts
The analyses released by the international SEO industry are in line with what was observed in the Italian data, revealing similar dynamics, but with important nuances. Several commentators have in fact reported strong instability in the news sector, with noticeable fluctuations on Search, Discover, and Top Stories, and some large publishers recording sudden declines, while others benefited from equally rapid increases, often without a direct correlation with recent content interventions.
In particular, Barry Schwartz and Glenn Gabe documented a strong “tremor” on December 20, confirming the global synchrony of the update. Gabe, in particular, spoke of a “red-hot” update for news publishers, reporting sharp declines for many publications and the aforementioned phenomenon of decoupling, i.e., sites that lost positions in SERPs and simultaneously disappeared from Discover and Top Stories.
Another recurring element concerns sensitive YMYL sectors, particularly finance and health, where the movements are more pronounced and polarized. Again, the shared interpretation points to a gradual rebalancing rather than specific interventions. Overall, the international narrative describes a broad, layered core update consistent with a continuous evolution of central ranking systems, rather than a sudden change of direction.
SEOZoom’s analysis of Italian SERPs
As mentioned, this December update also gave us the opportunity to use the new Observatory, which goes beyond the reading system used in the past and provides a more granular and continuous view of movements in SERPs and in specific sectors identified by Google.
The reading by macro-areas, in particular, shows clear differences in the intensity of the movements. While some areas show more marked and prolonged fluctuations, others remain at low levels of volatility. Furthermore, the trend is not uniform over time, because the same areas that are more unstable in the central phase of the update tend to stabilize in the final part of the rollout. This suggests that the update had a differentiated impact on the SERP structure, with effects that extended over time for some sets of queries.
The impact of the update on sectors – who was most affected
Thanks to the Observatory’s sectoral view, we can map with surgical precision where the algorithm had the greatest impact.
Overall, the average volatility percentage data for the period shows an average impact, without particularly intense peaks and movements that are still within the “norm” of the SERP instability curve.
In any case, the shift affecting the information/commercial and sensitive sectors is clear, where values were higher than during periods of algorithmic “calm.”
Specifically:
- News, media, and publications (7.17%): this sector recorded the highest value in the entire basket, on a par with retail. This volatility suggests a profound rewriting of editorial SERPs, where visibility has been massively redistributed among publications. However, compared to the warnings of international analysts, SEOZoom data in Italy shows us a partially different and more nuanced reality, without the “indiscriminate slaughter” that has affected other countries. On the contrary, large publishers (Gazzetta, Repubblica) have emerged stronger.
- Retailers & General Merchandise (7.17%): identical data for generalist e-commerce. At the height of the Christmas season, Google applied critical volatility to large online catalogs, making rankings extremely fluid during the decisive days for sales.
- Vehicles (7.02%) and Arts and Entertainment (7.02%): these verticals also exceeded the critical threshold of 7%, signaling major reshuffling in both transactional queries related to automotive and informational queries related to entertainment and culture.
In contrast, other sectors showed significantly greater resilience, acting as an “anchor” of stability:
- Health (4.89%): this is the lowest and most surprising figure. With volatility below 5%, the medical and healthcare sector was the least affected by the update. This suggests that trust and authority assessments in the YMYL domain had already been consolidated by previous iterations and were not subject to priority review. Yet two major information giants on major medical issues, Humanitas and Mypersonaltrainer, suffered a significant decline.
- Occasions and gifts (5.49%) and Law and government (5.71%): here too, fluctuations were limited, a sign that the algorithm maintained the pre-existing balance on legal queries or vertical offer aggregators.
Movements in SEOZoom’s top 100 ranking
Another significant signal comes from the analysis of the overall ranking of Italian websites, which the December 2025 Core Update did not disrupt, although it did produce measurable and consistent shifts in the upper range, especially between positions 10 and 50, where the most intense competition for visibility and high-volume keywords is concentrated.
Overall, the top positions remain “frozen” – confirming that the update has not affected the main nodes of Italian web navigation: Wikipedia, Amazon, and the major social networks maintain their status as web infrastructure, almost transcending the normal logic of ranking and becoming “anchors” of reliability for Google. Yet, Instagram gains one position and overtakes YouTube, taking third place, a symbolically significant change involving two global platforms with very high Zoom Authority and a structural presence in Italian SERPs.
In the publishing sector, Gazzetta.it records net growth, gaining three positions in the overall ranking, while Repubblica.it gains four positions, strengthening its presence in the upper echelons of the Top 100 and confirming a positive dynamic compared to other major generalist publishers.
On the opposite side, some established brands show a decline in terms of relative positioning; Transfermarkt, in particular, loses six positions in the Top 100 ranking, representing one of the most significant declines in terms of overall ranking, while remaining in the upper echelons of the Italian landscape. Zalando also records a decline, losing two positions, which is part of a pattern of progressive reduction in visibility compared to previous months.
Winners & Losers of the update: what emerges from the SEOZoom data
Let’s take a closer look at the domains to understand who has gained and who has lost visibility as a result of the update. As is our “tradition,” we have isolated and analyzed a significant sample of Italian sites that have recorded abnormal changes (positive or negative) in the reference period, cross-referencing Zoom Authority (ZA) movements with organic traffic estimates and filtering out the natural seasonal fluctuations of December as much as possible.
In general, we note that the December 2025 Core Update also affected sites with high Zoom Authority, without completely overturning the values. Those who grow do so because they maintain consistency and breadth of coverage, while those who lose do so because that same breadth is no longer sustained at the same level. It is in this gray area, made up of micro-shifts but numerically significant, that the real effect of the update plays out.
The main sites gaining visibility
Among the winners, there are signs of recovery, consolidation, or progressive growth after previous periods of weakness.
The update further strengthens the domain’s visibility, with keyword growth and consolidation of Zoom Authority, stable at 92 points (its maximum value).
Specifically, estimated traffic goes from 120.5 million visits pre-update (checkpoint on 12/03/2025, to be precise) to 128.4 million, while keeping the scope of indexed keywords essentially unchanged. The data shows an improvement in the average ranking on branded and navigational queries already in the Top 10, consistent with an increasingly stable position in the SERPs.
Instagram is one of the strongest domains in Italian SERPs on branded, navigational, and discovery queries related to people, brands, and visual content. Its organic visibility directly affects the balance between social media, creators, and publishers, especially on searches where Google intercepts mixed intentions between information and navigation.
- Gazzetta
The leading Italian sports newspaper benefits from Google’s update, which brings with it a 1-point increase in Zoom Authority, on an already very high scale, but above all a significant increase in estimated traffic, which rises from 28.9 million to 42 million (and the keywords in the Top 10 alone rise from 134k to 140k).
Analysis of rising keywords shows a strengthening of high-volume core queries such as “Serie A standings” (Pos. 1), “Serie A today” (Pos. 1), and “transfer market.”
- Repubblica
The year also ended on a positive note for the Repubblica website, which dominates Italian SERPs with a huge number of informative, news, and in-depth queries, often in direct competition with other major publishers, and has seen an end to the fluctuations of previous months. The increase in keywords in the Top 10 (+4,100) on informational queries such as “news” and “news today” generates an estimated traffic increase of over 1 million visits, which also generates an increase in ZA, reaching a value of 80.
- Libero
The well-known generalist portal (with a strong focus on news, current affairs, and broad-spectrum queries, but also a provider of email and other services) is surprisingly one of the winners of this update, emerging with a 2-point increase in Zoom Authority and a progressive strengthening after a phase of relative stability.
The domain records one of the most significant percentage changes in the panel: the increase in traffic (+3.44M) and keywords in the Top 10 (+6,300) signals a recovery in visibility on service queries (“libero mail”) and television/generalist topics.
- Aranzulla
After months of decline, the update brings a visible boost to the Italian reference site for technical guides, which is heavily exposed to both core updates and the impact of AI Overview, as the author himself has publicly highlighted in recent months. The recovery does not bring the site back to its historical levels, but it does interrupt a consolidated negative trend, with positive signs in terms of visibility and keywords. The ZA rises to 79 (but exactly one year ago it was 82…) and estimated visits also increase, +1.5M compared to last month.
- Easy
Among the main Italian comparison sites, with strong exposure on commercial and informational queries related to finance, insurance, and services, the site gains +1 in ZA (75) and brings traffic from 3.3 million to 4.4 million. Growth is driven by navigational queries and access to services related to third-party service brands (“alice mail,” “vodafone”), confirming its status as a trusted sorting hub for users.
- Everyeye
The vertical magazine on video games and technology shows a particular trend: despite a reduction in total keywords (-10k), traffic increases (+345k) and keywords on the front page grow, with a particular strengthening of its presence on core queries in the gaming sector – such as “ps5” or “the witcher.”
- Threads
The update acts as an accelerator for the new microblogging social platform. ZA grew by +3 points in two months (now 64, compared to just 45 in May!) and organic traffic almost doubled during the update window (from 357k to 624k). Google is starting to treat Threads as an autonomous entity relevant to real-time conversations.
Here, the success is twofold, because Google assigns (more) visibility to both the international domain and the one located in Italy (which gains +1 ZA), which monopolize or almost monopolize the responses and overall coverage on visual and inspirational queries. The rise of the global version is proof that localization is not a rigid constraint for visual intent.
- Etsy
After a prolonged period of decline, the marketplace specializing in crafts and vintage items is reversing course and showing signs of recovery. The recovery is partial, but it breaks a negative medium-term trajectory. The ZA rises to 74 (up 1 from November 2025, but still far from the 77 of November 2024), as do estimated traffic and keywords on the first page.
- VanityFair
Good results also for the lifestyle and fashion magazine, which scored one more ZA point between December and January and, above all, gained about 1 million estimated visits, consolidating its visibility on the main keywords related to celebrities, gossip, and entertainment.
The main sites that lost visibility
And now let’s look at the other side of the coin, the sites that ended the year on a negative note, penalized by Google’s update.
- YouTube
As already seen in the top 100 ranking, Google’s video platform comes out badly from this update. The Zoom Authority is actually stable at 94 (but in September it was 96!), but there has been an estimated drop in traffic (-600k) on specific service or text queries (“gmail,” “translator,” “subito”), where video results are no longer the primary response and seem to have lost ground compared to before the update.
- Portale Bambini
There was also a structural collapse for the site that publishes educational and creative resources for children: three points less in ZA and traffic halved (from 1.2M to 564k) in less than a month. The site loses positioning on “commodity” and light evergreen content (drawings, crafts), which Google seems to have devalued or aggregated elsewhere.
- Humanitas
While maintaining a very high level of trust, the well-known health information portal suffers a decline in traffic (-1.6 million) and loses positions in the Top 10 on some high-volume medical keywords (“psoriasis,” “swab”). This seems to be a sign of redistribution in the YMYL sector: Google is removing the monopoly of a single player in order to diversify sources, while maintaining its authority.
This data is significant because it involves a leading brand in the health sector, one of Google’s preferred sources for generating responses in AI Overview, as noted in our analysis.
- MyPersonalTrainer
The situation is similar for another player in the vast world of “wellness,” which, like Humanitas, has seen a decline in informative keywords related to health and wellness, with an estimated reduction in organic visibility during the update period. In reality, this is a continuation of an already established downward trend, with a further reduction in estimated traffic and keywords in the top 10.
- Zalando Italia
The iconic fashion e-commerce site is also down, showing a net decline of 900k visits on highly competitive product brand queries, such as Nike or Swarovski, in a context of strong competition with official brands and other retailers.
- Transfermarkt
Transfermarkt is one of the leading European sources on the transfer market, teams, and players, with a very strong presence on high-volume sports queries. While maintaining the same level of authority, in the comparison between December 10, 2025, and January 7, 2026, estimated traffic fell from 11,925,807 to 10,960,578, with a loss of approximately 965,000 estimated visits. The top 10 keywords drop from 157,519 to 152,855, while the total keywords remain essentially stable. The losses affect head queries such as Juventus transfer market, Lukaku, Ligue 1, and Milan transfer market, indicating a reduction in visibility on the most competitive searches.
- Corriere dello Sport
During the update period, the sports newspaper’s website lost 1 point in Zoom Authority, as well as nearly 2 million in estimated traffic and 5,000 keywords in the top 10. In short, while La Gazzetta soars, its competitor loses ground on high-volume generalist queries such as Serie A, live, Premier League, and Formula 1.
- Meteo
The most marked decline in absolute terms: estimated traffic fell from 11,759,348 before the update to 6,312,835 at the beginning of January, with a loss of over 5.4 million estimated visits; Zoom Authority drops from 76 to 75, and even the top 10 keywords drop from 105,929 to 98,189.
- Ansa
The progressive decline in visibility on Google over time continues for Italy’s leading news agency, with a steady reduction in keywords and visibility compared to historical peaks – one figure stands out above all others: today, the ZA is 76, but less than a year ago (February 2025) it was 78, and in November 2023 it was as high as 81. The erosion is particularly evident in ultra-generalist queries (“latest news,” “weather,” “stock market today”) where the nature of the agency no longer guarantees positioning by inertia.
- Galbani
The official website of the historic Italian food brand, which also serves as a recipe portal, continues a downward trend that began in 2024, with a further decline in high-volume keywords and reduced visibility. Galbani is losing ground in a saturated sector, where the commercial nature of the site struggles to compete with vertical cooking publishers, for example on common culinary queries such as “mashed potatoes” or “cold pasta.” Looking at the long-term trend, the domain has lost over 50% of its visibility compared to November 2024.
What’s happening in AI Overview?
A granular analysis of the winners and losers also reveals another fact: there is no direct correlation between the December 2025 Core Update trend and visibility in AI Overview. The winners of the update do not systematically show parallel growth in AI Overview: publishers such as Repubblica, Gazzetta, and Libero consolidate or improve their Zoom Authority despite stable or slightly declining positions in AI Overview, while social domains such as Instagram, Threads, and Pinterest strengthen their organic ranking without substantial increases in Google functionality. Similarly, the losers are not penalized in the AI-generated box either: for example, Meteo.it loses over 5.4 million in estimated traffic between pre- and post-update, but the reduction in AI Overview is much more modest. Humanitas recorded a drop in organic traffic (from 12.9 million to 11.4 million) but actually saw an increase in AI Overview presence, as did Mypersonaltrainer. In short, a pattern emerges: AI Overview follows its own dynamics with respect to the functioning of Google Search.
The feature behaves like an autonomous surface, not synchronized with core update rebalancing, moving with independent timing and intensity—and therefore also with positioning criteria that are not entirely identical to classic ranking factors.
What we take away
Cross-sectional observation of all these cases allows us to isolate some recurring dynamics that characterized the December 2025 Core Update, beyond the specificities of individual sectors. No surprises, but a profound rebalancing that also affects the most solid domains.
First of all, the update took a long time and did not produce clear effects at any single moment. The data shows gradual movements, often not very noticeable in the short term, but clear when comparing before and after the update. This explains why many domains do not “collapse” or “explode,” but gain or lose ground incrementally, especially in terms of top 10 keywords and Zoom Authority.
One of the clearest signs is that even leading brands are not immune. YouTube, ANSA, Meteo.it, Humanitas, and major sports publishers continue to command huge volumes, but are losing visibility on the most strategic queries. At the same time, other equally strong brands are consolidating their position. The core update does not “reward the small against the big,” but redefines the balance of power between the big players and reaffirms that a strong brand remains central, but is not untouchable.
For both winners and losers, the recurring data concerns very high-volume queries. When a domain loses, it often does so on core keywords in the sector. When it grows, it does so by maintaining or strengthening those same areas. The long tail matters, but it is on head keywords that the core update has the most significant impact in terms of overall traffic. The most exposed sectors remain those related to information: news, sports, weather, health, and how-to. The data does not indicate selective penalization, but rather a compression of visibility. Many sites continue to rank, but with less space available and greater competition among domains with very high authority. In this context, even a limited loss of positions has a significant effect on traffic.
Finally, one last confirmation: social and discovery are increasingly present in SERPs. The further growth of Instagram, Threads, and Pinterest proves that Google continues to integrate social and discovery content as direct answers in an increasingly stable manner.
How to turn information into method with SEOZoom
To understand whether your traffic decline is due to these dynamics or specific problems, you need to isolate the period of volatility by starting to observe the overall behavior of SERPs. This is the first methodological step and also the most overlooked. If you start immediately from a domain that has lost traffic, you end up attributing to the update what is often only a local consequence. With SEOZoom, the work always starts earlier, upstream.
Use the Time Machine by setting the dates to December 10 (pre) and January 7 (post). Don’t just look at the total number of keywords lost. Filter for keywords that have dropped out of the Top 10: if the keywords lost are generic or “off-target,” it is the effect of redefining the perimeter (as with YouTube). If you have lost your core keywords (as with Meteo.it), the impact is structural and requires a review of your content strategy.
Always check the Zoom Authority in the project tab: a variation of +/- 1 or 2 points in this period is a strong algorithmic signal of a revaluation of domain trust, much more reliable than daily traffic fluctuations.
Finally, remember: by definition, a core update does not “punish” or “reward.” It rebalances. It redistributes. It narrows or widens spaces. The optimization method works when you stay anchored to the numbers, and SEOZoom helps you avoid automatic interpretations and focus on what is measurable: positions, keywords, authority, trajectories.
