Google algorithm updates 2025 in review: 3 core updates and 1 spam update

Google launched four official and confirmed algorithmic updates in 2025, three core updates and one spam update. This is in comparison to last year, in 2024, where we had seven confirmed updates, then in 2023, when we had nine confirmed updates and in 2022 and 2021, Google had 10 confirmed algorithmic updates.

Fewer updates. Google appears to be confirming fewer updates, even though Google said a year ago, that we should expect more core updates, more often. But that doesn’t mean there were fewer updates. Google did reaffirm that it does not announce all core updates, that the search company only confirms the larger, broader core updates.

Plus, I covered dozens of unconfirmed Google updates on the Search Engine Roundtable. It was a super volatile year, even without Google confirming as many algorithmic search updates.

Google confirmed algorithm update summary

We whipped up this timeline documenting all the confirmed Google search algorithm updates in 2025, so you can visualize the updates over the year.

Three Google core updates in 2024

Google had three core updates in 20225, four core updates in 2024, the same number as it had in 2023, but in 2022 Google only had two core updates. We had core updates in March, June, and December.

March 2025 core update. The Google March 2025 core update started rolling out March 13, it took 14 days to complete, and finished on March 27. Google told us this core update was a normal core update. Google wrote:

“Today we released the March 2025 core update to Google Search. This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. We also continue our work to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year. Some have already happened; additional ones will come later.”

The volatility from this update seemed similar to previous core updates – we broke that down over here.

June 2025 core update. The June 2025 core update started rolling out on June 30, it took about 16 days to complete, and finished on July 17. Again, this was a normal broad core update. Google wrote:

“This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”

The volatility from this update seemed similar to previous core updates – we broke that down over here. The interesting thing with this update is that we saw some accounts of partial recoveries from the September 2023 helpful content update and previous core updates. Then we saw a lot of heated volatility from July 11th through July 14th.

December 2025 core update. The December 2025 core update started rolling out on December 11, it did not yet complete, I will update this story once it is done rolling out. Again, this was a normal broad core update. Google wrote:

“This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.”

The volatility was intense but also super calm throughout most of the weekdays. We had two big spikes, both on Saturdays, on December 13th and December 20th.

One Google spam update in 2025

August 2025 spam update. The August 2025 spam update started rolling out on August 26, it took 27 days to complete, and finished on September 22. This update was a general and broad spam update. Google did not announce anything unique with this spam update. Google just wrote:

“This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations.”

This spam update touched down very quickly, where sites that were impacted by this update saw the results within about 24 hours. It hit hard and fast. Then, around Sept. 9, the update heated up again, with a number of sites noticing ranking fluctuations and indexing issues. While many impacted sites saw steep declines in Google Search organic visibility, some sites that were hit by previous spam updates saw significant recoveries.

Other Google algorithm changes, updates, tweaks or topics

Other Google updates. While we had three core updates and one spam update, Google also pushed out other search specific updates in 2025. Here is a list of those:

• This year, Google released AI Mode and expanded AI Mode to more countries and regions throughout the year.
• Also, throughout the year, Google released update Gemini models to improve AI Mode and AI Overview responses. The lastest being Gemini 3 Flash, and Gemini 3 Pro.
• In June 2025, Google updated its ranking algorithms for explicit videos and content. Google wrote, “If you don’t allow Google to fetch your video content files, Google can’t run automated protections against egregious violations such as CSAM. Content that can’t be fetched may pose a risk to our users, so Google may demote or filter such pages where the embedded video content is unavailable and our automated systems determine that the page may contain explicit content. Not allowing Googlebot to fetch your video files may significantly affect the ranking of your explicit pages on Google Search, and especially in Video mode.”

Google Search bugs. Google also had several search bugs throughout 2025:

• In June, Google has a serving issue within Google Search that was short lived.
• In August, Google had a crawling bug that took it several days to resolve.