Google Helpful Content Update & Link Spam Update Still Ongoing

Welcome back from the holidays, don’t worry; you didn’t miss much. The December 2022 helpful content update and December 2022 link spam update are not done yet. They should be done soon, but right now, when I write this, they are not done.

John Mueller of Google said on Twitter this morning when asked about the status that these two updates are “still ongoing.”

Yes, they’re still ongoing.

— John Mueller is mostly not here 🐀 (@JohnMu) January 3, 2023

As a reminder, the two updates were delayed in its finish date because they ran into the holidays. Google said there was a security issue with completing them on the holidays.

Also, we did see some big turbulence days before Christmas and then things clamed down a lot. The truth is, the Google volatility is much calmer still than the previous couple of weeks. We also saw some fluctuations on December 26th.

The December 2022 helpful content update is over two weeks since it should have been completed; it is four weeks and a day. The December 2022 link spam update is now just under a week overdue, it is just about three weeks since it was released.

I do expect these updates to finish any minute/day now – but I have no more insight than any of you. As of the time this story was published, the Google updates page still says these two updates are not complete.

Forum discussion at Twitter.