If you’ve opened your Google Analytics or Search Console in the last few weeks and felt a chill, you’re not alone. December 2025 brought not only the close of the year, but one of the most intense digital earthquakes we’ve experienced in the last decade: the December 2025 Google Core Update.
We are not talking about a simple adjustment of nuts and bolts. Google has changed the entire machinery.
The indexing rules that worked at the beginning of the year have become obsolete. Today, the battle for attention is not just against other websites, but against the search interface itself and itsAI-generated responses(AI Overviews). At Inprofit we know that seeing metrics in the red generates uncertainty, but understanding the “why” is the first step to climb back to the top.
Let’s break down exactly what has happened, why the “right” content is no longer enough and how we can transform this crisis into an opportunity for brand authority.
The Paradigm Shift: From “Search” to “Answer”.
To understand the drop in visibility, we must first take off the traditional SEO glasses of 2023. For years, the goal was to please the Google robot with perfect structures and exact keywords. That’s over.
The December update has put the focus radically on real usability and human experience. Google has had enough of “filler” content, that which is written just to rank but contributes nothing new. The algorithm now has a much finer semantic capability to distinguish between an article written by an expert and one massively generated to capture clicks.
The search engine has evolved into an answer engine. If your content is shallow, Google no longer needs to send you traffic; its AI is able to read it, synthesize it and deliver it directly to the user without the user leaving the SERPs.
Why has Google penalized sites that used to work well?
This is the million dollar question. Many clients come to us with technically flawless sites that have lost 40% visibility. The answer often hurts: your content was right, but it wasn’t essential.
The new algorithm severely punishes the lack of E-E-A-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority and Reliability). It is no longer enough to collect information that already exists on ten other sites. If you don’t bring a unique perspective, proprietary data or an outstanding user experience (UX), the algorithm pushes you to the second page, the graveyard of the internet.
In addition, the current volatility in the SERPs is because Google is testing in real time which sources are trustworthy enough to feed its AI responses. If your brand doesn’t convey that absolute trust, you’re out of the equation.
Important note: This is not a manual penalty in most cases. It is a quality retargeting. Your site has not done anything “wrong”, simply others have proven to be more useful for the user’s current search intent.
Indexing and Crawling: The New Technical Issues
Beyond content quality, we are detecting serious indexing problems. Google has become much more selective with its Crawl Budget. Before, Google tried to index almost everything. Now, with the immense amount of AI-generated content flooding the web, the search engine has become a very demanding bouncer.
If your website has thousands of URLs with thin content or duplicate content, it is likely that Google has simply decided to stop crawling them. This causes the overall visibility of the domain to plummet, dragging down even your best pages.
Would you like to know if your website is suffering from “Crawl Budget” problems or if it is a content quality problem? At Inprofit we can perform a deep technical audit to diagnose the root of the downfall.
GEO: The New Era of Generative Engine Optimization
This is where our Martech specialty comes in. If you’re still doing SEO thinking only about keywords, you’re optimizing for the past. The immediate future (and the present) is the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)..
Search engines such as Google, but also platforms such as Perplexity or SearchGPT itself, do not search for keywords; they search for meanings and contexts to build answers.
How to adapt your strategy to GEO and recover traffic?
Visibility in 2026 is not just measured in clicks, it’s measured in citations. The goal is that when Google’s AI generates a response about your industry, it will cite your company as the source of that information. This changes the way we write and structure the web.
To survive and thrive after the December update, we must pivot our strategy towards these SEO pillars:
- Structure for machines and humans: Content must be extremely easy to digest. Use structured data schemas (Schema Markup) to tell the AI exactly what each part of your text is.
- Niche authority: Stop trying to be all-encompassing. Google rewards vertical depth. It’s better to be the world’s encyclopedia on a specific service than a mediocre generalist.
- Experiential” content: AI can generate text, but it cannot have experiences. Include real success stories, informed subjective opinions, proprietary videos and nuances that only a professional human can provide. That’s what Google wants to index.
Critical steps to reverse the negative trend
There is no magic button to recover traffic overnight, but there is a clear roadmap that we at Inprofit apply with our partners to get out of the danger zone. Recovery requires patience and surgical precision.
The first thing to do is to clean up. We must audit the site to remove or merge content that does not add value. Having fewer but higher quality pages is a positive sign for the new algorithm. Content Pruning frees up crawl budget and concentrates authority on URLs that actually convert.
The second is the speed and UX. With the rise of mobile and immediacy, the Core Web Vitals are non-negotiable. If your website takes a long time to load or the design is confusing, the user goes back in seconds. That behavior (“Pogo-sticking”) tells Google that your result is no good, sinking you further in the ranking.
Finally, diversify. Don’t rely on just one type of format. Integrate video, infographics and interactive formats that retain the user. Dwell time is now a key indicator that your content delivers on the promise of value.
Is your business ready for the SEO of the future?
The Google Core Update of December 2025 has been a warning to navigators: the mediocre no longer has a place on the first page. Organic visibility has become a premium asset that will only be achieved by those who understand the symbiosis between technology, artificial intelligence and the human factor.
In today’s environment, trying to fix a visibility drop with the same techniques you used two years ago is like trying to fix an electric car with steam-powered tools. You need a 360 view that integrates advanced analytics, high-level content strategy and a deep understanding of how new AIs “think”.
The volatility of the SERPs will continue. Competitors who don’t adapt will disappear from the search results, leaving a huge market gap for those who do do their homework. The question is: do you want to be the one who disappears or the one who occupies that new leadership space?
At Inprofit we don’t just do marketing; we design business solutions adapted to the new technological reality. If your metrics have fallen, do not wait until it is irreversible.
Request today a strategic consultancy with our expert SEO and Martech team. Let’s analyze your case, recover your visibility and prepare your business to lead in the AI era.
