SEO Industry Updates: What did we see in December 2024?

The end of the year brought with it some important Google updates including the December 2024 Broad Core Update and Spam Update. We also heard from Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, and his thoughts on Search in 2025 and beyond. Technology is changing fast, and search engines are adapting quickly to this new age. Google launched Gemini 2.0 and OpenAI made SearchGPT accessible to all accounts on a global scale.

SEO is constantly evolving and in this age of AI-powered search, it’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed with information, especially if you’re new to the world of SEO.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the biggest news of the month, what this all means for your brand, and how you can take advantage of things going forward to drive organic performance.

Google’s Important December 2024 Updates

Google released four Core Updates in 2024, demonstrating their commitment to surfacing the most useful content for their users.

What is a Broad Core Update?

Google typically makes several changes to their broad search algorithms each year, and they are referred to as Core Updates. Google generally give notice  when they happen on their list of

They also frequently make updates across social media platforms such as X and LinkedIn too, so professionals can keep up to date.

There’s always a lot of noise in the digital marketing world when one of these updates lands because Core Updates can have significant impacts to website traffic either negatively or positively, but if you follow Google’s guidelines and create the best content for your users rather than focusing SEO hacks and cheats, then you can be a lot more confident that these updates will be in your favour.

The best-case scenario is that you don’t even recognise that an update was released, or of course you see a spike in organic traffic following one.

These updates always focus on surfacing the highest quality content online, so you always need to create content with your users in mind. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and really think about their needs when they’re carrying out a specific search.

Just because you see your traffic drop following an update, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done something wrong. It could just mean that a competitor has elevated their content and Google have rewarded them, so always look for opportunities to make your content more useful.

How this impacts you

Generally, Google announce when a Broad Core Update was released and when it finishes rolling out. The December Core Update began rolling out on the 12^th of December, completing its rollout on the 18^th.

This should make it a little easier to identify if you’ve been hit, as you can compare the first few weeks post update against the same period prior to the update starting and see how you’ve been affected, if it all. You’ll want to use tools such as Google Search Console to analyse your non-brand traffic and see how things look.

Recovering from a Core Update will depend on how severely you’ve been hit and what areas of your site are affected. This will determine your response, as you don’t just want to overhaul your entire content strategy if you see things trending downwards. You can use Search Console data to help identify any trends in terms of biggest losers.

Perhaps it’s a specific category for example. Then, you can drill down into your content and look for opportunities to improve it, such as adding more detailed sections, or answering customer’s questions.

At Summit, our SEO strategies revolve around creating content for your customer, not just search engines, and we have the expertise and tools at hand to quickly identify if you’ve been hit by one of these updates, and help you recover any lost traffic.

Google Spam Update

This update began immediately after the December Core Update, starting rollout on the 19^th, and finishing on the 26^th of December. The algorithms involved in this update are different to that of a Core Update in that they specifically target the detection and filtering of spammy content in search results.

Although this update is released globally and all languages are affected, generally, this will impact a small number of websites.

How this impacts you

The goal of the algorithms powering this update is to filter out content and websites that use deceptive and manipulative tactics to game search engines, with a heavy focus on backlink manipulation. It’s typically unlikely you’ll be impacted by this update unless you’ve either carried out deceptive tactics yourself, or a previous SEO vendor did so without you knowing that they were, in order to try and get some results quickly.

Again, it’s very useful to know exactly when the update began rolling out so you can monitor your traffic accordingly, although it can sometimes be a little trickier if this update rolls out alongside something else. Seek the help of an experienced SEO professional if you’re unsure.

Deceptive practices can include:

– Backlink spam
– Keyword stuffing
– Misleading functionality
– Machine generated traffic

You can refer to Google’s spam policies for a comprehensive list of things to avoid doing, and exactly what they are if you don’t want to get hit by any of their Spam Updates.

Insights into how search may change from Google’s CEO

Sundar Pichai gave an insightful interview at the DealBook Summit in December, in a conversation with Andrew Sorkin of The New York Times, Pichai spoke candidly about how he thinks Search will evolve in 2025, and his enthusiasm around tackling more complex queries.

The interview with Sundar focused on three key areas of the search experience: AI, content and traffic & fair use.

People are searching differently and not all searches start or end with Google. Search engine optimisation will slowly change to Search Everywhere Optimisation, with the advent of AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and short-form content-sharing platforms such as TikTok exploding in popularity.

It’s more important than ever that you get your content spread across the entire online ecosystem.

The launch of Gemini 2.0

On 11^th December, Google launched their updated Gemini 2.0 model, demonstrating their commitment to being at the forefront of AI integration. This updated model is now incorporated into traditional Google Search, helping Google to further understand complex human queries such as math equations and multi-step questions.

How this impacts you

Search will continue to become even more conversational in the future, and so it’s important that you create your content with these conversations in mind. You can optimise your content for AI Overviews by ensuring it’s structured using simple sentences, and it directly and efficiently answers the user’s question.

This creates a valuable opportunity to provide deeper-level content and incorporate FAQs to target a wider range of audiences.

SearchGPT becomes more accessible

This is now available to all user accounts on a global scale, with OpenAI improving their mobile and maps experiences, making them faster and more intuitive through voice search.

Although this doesn’t mean that you need to go away and change your entire SEO strategy, it’s good practice to be mindful of how this could impact search in the near-future. You can experiment with optimising your content specifically for these kinds of queries and scale up from there if you see positive results.

It’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket when testing any new strategy or technology as the fundamentals of SEO continue to remain in place. Create engaging useful content for your users and match their user intent. Your customers (and search engines) will thank you for it.

Need help with your SEO strategy? Reach out to one of our experts at hello@summitmedia.com.

Written by Hadley Hodgson