Google launched four official and verified algorithmic updates in 2025, three main updates and one spam update. This is compared to last year, in 2024, when we had seven confirmed updates, and in 2023, when we had nine confirmed updates and in 2022 and 2021, Google had 10 confirmed algorithmic updates.
A few updates. Google seems to be confirming a few updates, or Google said last year, that we should expect more major updates, more often. But that doesn’t mean there have been fewer updates. Google also confirmed that it does not publish all major updates, that the search company only confirms large, comprehensive major updates.
Also, I posted a bunch of unverified Google reviews on the Search Engine Roundtable. It was a very volatile year, except that Google confirmed many algorithmic search updates.
Google has confirmed a summary of the algorithm update
We’ve compiled this timeline listing all confirmed updates to Google’s search algorithm through 2025, so you can visualize the updates over the course of the year.
Three important updates for Google in 2024
Google had three major updates in 20225, four major updates in 2024, the same number as it had in 2023, but in 2022 Google had only two major updates. We had important updates in March, June, and December.
Main update March 2025. The Google March 2025 major update started rolling out on March 13, took 14 days to complete, and ended on March 27. Google told us that this major update is a regular basic update. Google wrote:
“Today we released the March 2025 major update to Google Search. This is a regular update designed to surface more 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; some will come later.”
The volatility from this update appears to be similar to previous major updates – we’ve broken that down here.
Main update June 2025. The main update for June 2025 was first released on June 30, took about 16 days to complete, and was completed on July 17. Again, this was a general update. Google wrote:
“This is a general update designed to put the best, most satisfying content for searchers of all types of sites.”
The volatility from this update appears to be similar to previous major updates – we’ve broken that down here. The interesting thing about this update is that we saw some accounts of returns from the useful content update of September 2023 and previous main updates. Then we saw a large thermal fluctuation from July 11th to July 14th.
December 2025 core update. The main update for December 2025 started to be released on December 11th, it is not finished yet, I will update this story when it is finished being released. Again, this was a general basic comprehensive review. Google wrote:
“This is a general update designed to put the best, most satisfying content for searchers of all types of sites.”
Volatility was strong but also very calm during most days of the week. We had two big spikes, both on Saturday, December 13th and December 20th.
One update for Google spam in 2025
Spam update for August 2025. The August 2025 spam update was first released on August 26, took 27 days to complete, and was completed on September 22. This update was a general and comprehensive spam update. Google didn’t announce anything different about this spam update. Google recently wrote:
“This is a general spam update, and will be rolled out to all languages and locations.”
This spam update came quickly, with sites affected by this update seeing results within 24 hours. It hit hard and fast. Then on September 9, the update flared up again, with a number of sites seeing ranking fluctuations and indexing issues. While many affected sites saw a significant drop in organic visibility on Google Search, some sites affected by previous spam updates saw significant gains.
Other Google algorithm changes, updates, tweaks or topics
More updates from Google. While we had three major updates and one spam update, Google also rolled out some 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.
- And, throughout the year, Google released updated Gemini models to improve AI mode and AI overview responses. Last but not least was the Gemini 3 Flash, and the Gemini 3 Pro.
- In June 2025, Google updated its ranking algorithms for graphic videos and content. Google wrote, “If you do not allow Google to download your video content files, Google cannot implement automatic protection against serious violations such as CSAM. Undownloadable content may be harmful to our users, so Google may demote or filter such pages when embedded video content is not available and our automated systems determine that the page may contain a clear rating of your Google files. clear pages in Google search, and especially in video mode.”
Google Search Bugs. Google also had several search bugs in 2025:
- In June, Google had a usability issue within Google Search that was short-lived.
- In August, Google had a crawling bug that took several days to resolve.
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