A Google Core Update and new features for ChatGPT and Search Console – SEO News December 2025

Happy New Year! Before looking forward to 2026, let us have a look back at the SEO news from December 2025. The month was marked by a major update from Google. You should be checking your ranking for keywords in Google search results now this update is complete. If you have a business website, also check out ChatGPT’s new local business panels to see if information about your is correct. Also discover some new cool features in Google Search Console and prepare for ads in AI.

Despite the increasing use of alternative AI tools, the start of 2026 sees Google as the most popular search tool in the World. Even ChatGPT relies on information from Google to answer search queries as illustrated by the new local search results presented below. Being indexed by Google and ranking for keywords will be essential to get traffic to your website in 2026 even if that traffic doesn’t come directly from Google. So, keep doing SEO and keep doing SEO with SEOPress in 26!

Google December Core Update

Many SEO experts and web site owners had a stressful Christmas! Google launched a Core Update on December 11^th and announced that it would take three weeks to complete. It actually finished rolling out on December 29^th. Because Core Updates can cause sites to lose ranking and traffic, website owners can be justifiably worried when Google announces a new one and even more worried if they see traffic or rankings drop.

You can follow the official announcements from Google about ranking updates via the Google Search Status Dashboard and Google Search Central social media accounts on LinkedIn and X. Note, however, that there are fewer and fewer official updates. Google only announced 4 updates in 2025. The best way to spot ranking drops for a WordPress site is to use SEOPress Insights.

Google doesn’t give much information about updates anymore either. The LinkedIn post for the December 2025 Core Update only contained the following information: “This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites”. This leaves us guessing about what Google changed in its algorithm.

SEO expert Glenn Gabe reported on the update as it rolled out and released the story of the Core Before Christmas as a long blog post published in early January 2026. He saw the biggest losses for some major news publishers and large networks of sites who dropped out of both search results and Google Discover during the update. He also noted a lot of volatility for YMYL verticals such as medical and finance. Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode results were also impacted.

Although he warns that Core Updates are never about just one issue, Glenn does feel that user experience was a big factor in the December 2025 Core Update. He explains that pages that are difficult to use because of bad layout or intrusive ads may drop in rankings because of a signal called Navboost. This signal indicates whether users were “happy” or “unhappy” with the site they clicked on from Google search results. If a user stays on the page he clicked on, the page may get a boost in ranking.

If, however, the user comes straight back to Google, the page may be penalized. If your site dropped in Google search results between the 11^th and 29^th of December 2025 and has not gone back to previous positions, then you may have been penalized by the Core Update. Check our article Recovering from a Google Update for specific advice on what to need to do to recover. Note that Google recently announced that you may no longer have to wait for the next official Core Update to improve ranking as smaller Core Updates happen regularly.

ChatGPT adds Local knowledge graph results

OpenAI released the new GPT-5.2 model on December 11^th. The announcement makes no mention of improvements to local search but on December 19^th, Local SEO expert Greg Sterling spotted that ChatGPT Local Results Now Feature a Knowledge Panel. He shows examples of these new results in his article and compares their presentation with Google’s Local knowledge graph panels. In ChatGPT the description of each business is written by ChatGPT following a question-response structure usually including a summary of public reviews.

Results for a local search feature a map plotting addresses and clicking on any address will open the knowledge panel to the right of the screen on desktop and as a tab on mobile. OpenAI says that ChatGPT creates maps and panels on the fly using images and data from third-party sites (including a business’ own website). However, tests have proven that data, including the website address, is being taken directly from Google Business Profile. The Directions button also links to Google Maps.

The article mentions that results in ChatGPT may feature low quality images and inaccurate responses. If you own a local business, we suggest you test this feature and see if your knowledge panel is accurate. Important: Check the Website button to see if the website address is correct and the Call button to make sure the number being called is yours.

If you spot errors in information given by ChatGPT, check the sources listed at the bottom of the knowledge panel to see if you can find where incorrect information is coming from. Check your own website including structured data and your Google Business Profile too.

Google also announced in December that its AI chatbot, Gemini, would generate local results in a new visual format. You should test this too.

AI infrastructure is expensive. There is a lot of debate about how companies like OpenAI can monetize AI chat when, reportedly, 95 % of users are on the free version. Google has made most of its revenue from ads shown in search results. In December 2025, Google Ads was updated to show ads in AI Overviews for 12 new countries and also in AI Mode (currently a test in the United States only). Glenn Gabe (again) shared a screen shot of these new ads on X on December 28^th but comments that they are rare sightings. Ads are clearly marked “Sponsored” and are separate from the AI generated response.

There’s more… Based on the ad running in AI Overviews, I quickly checked similar queries in AI Mode. And yep, there’s an ad in AI Mode as well. Again, you don’t see ads in AIOs often and definitely not in AI Mode very often. Here’s a video of the ad in AI Mode. pic.twitter.com/IK21dtfcyf

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 28, 2025

According to a post on The Information, OpenAI is also preparing to add advertising to ChatGPT. Possibilities include clearly labelled sponsored ads, possibly in a sidebar, but the article also says that mockups exist where “ChatGPT could give sponsored information preferential treatment in responses to users’ ChatGPT queries.” This would be a completely new type of ad format and would blur the lines between genuine recommendations and sponsored ones.

In 2024, Perplexity AI tested sponsored follow-up questions for a limited number of advertisers as an experiment, but has not made it widely available.

If you currently run Google Ads campaigns, then your ads may already be showing up in Google’s AI responses. Ads need to have a suitable image and target large keywords. There is currently no way of checking if ads were shown or clicked in AI Overviews or AI Mode within Google Ads reporting. Keep your eyes open for announcements from other AI companies about advertising opportunities within AI in 2026.

New Google Search Console features

As we noted in November, Google appears to be putting a lot of effort into improving and communicating about Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools). We strongly recommend that all site owners create a Google Search Console account. If you have not already started using it, see our guide into getting started.

The new features released in December were:

• AI-powered configuration – this feature allows you to type a prompt describing what data you want and get a customized report that will apply filters, set date ranges and select metrics based on the request.
• Social channels – this experimental feature is currently for a limited number of websites only. It adds data about the visibility of a site’s social networks to Google Search Console’s Insights report.
• Weekly and Monthly views – this new option allows users to view Performance report graphs with weekly or monthly data points. Previously the report only plotted daily data.

By Benjamin Denis

CEO of SEOPress. 15 years of experience with WordPress. Founder of WP Admin UI & WP Cloudy plugins. Co-organizer of WordCamp Biarritz 2023 & WP BootCamp. WordPress Core Contributor.