Has anyone experienced the Google Core Update-apocalypse since last week?

I've had some decrease in traffic and was doing some research (making sure the usual SEO checklist stuff doesn't have any issues). It seems the latest Google core update has crushed a ton of websites, focusing on AI and above the fold content (specifically ads and LSAs).

Here are some threads from Reddit

Potential impacts from Google’s December Core Update

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One of my sites (~35 pages) has seen some dramatic changes since 12/11 when this roll out started.

For instance: Complete loss of keywords it’s ranked for (top 5) over the past 6 months Massive loss of niche-relevant backlinks (that still show as hot in SEMRush) Drop in impressions (tied back to keyword loss)

Pages with those keywords are still indexed on Google.

No Security or Manual actions flagged

No changes to crawl budget

Copy is AI proofed but human written.

I know these can get bumpy but this site is getting abused worse than Beecher in Oz.

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Direct traffic remains about the same, but organic traffic is almost dead.

I’ve given up on the page indexing report - that hasn’t been updated since 11/21.

The backlinks died around 8pm on the 11th - earlier in the day they were fine.

These pages were in AI overviews Thursday, but completely gone on Friday

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I got the same. I got more like a small page with around 25 pages. I've had in several Keywords position 1-5. They are all completely gone from today. Only one single page survived, a little vue application that ranked for the last 2 years continuously at position 1! And now it has been dropped to position 16 with this update. So the whole site got completely invisible, that's crazy..

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December 3rd Algorithm Update - Massive Traffic Drop Despite Stable Rankings?

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Anyone else get crushed by what seems like a December 3rd Google update? I run a network of beach webcam sites and saw 40-50% organic traffic loss overnight, but here's the weird part: rankings are stable (still position 1-3 for most keywords), CTRs collapsed, and video thumbnails disappeared from SERPs despite valid VideoObject schema. Meanwhile, YouTube video carousels now dominate every "[location] + webcam" query, and municipal/government sites suddenly outrank commercial sites for local queries. No manual actions, engagement metrics actually improved, and our B2B site is unaffected. This feels like a SERP format restructuring rather than a traditional penalty - curious if anyone else in local/video/webcam niches got hit similarly or has insights on recovery? Specifically wondering if others lost video rich snippets around this date.

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Core update December hitted whole website

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So my website got completely hit by the current core update. ALL my pages are gone in search terms where I ranked with posts between 1-5 before. Only one page(what's kinda a small vue app) is still available but dropped from position 1 to 12. I was never in this situation in the last 4 years. What is the next step to do now? Anyone got maybe a good resource to work through or experience?

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yeah, this is the case for me as well. My site is relatively new in my niche (started summer 2025) and has high-quality results. Competitors with much lower quality pages which provide near to no information are now ranked above me again, but their domains are much older.

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Lost all rankings with this update. Site was hit in August 2023 until August 2024, shot up and is now hit again.

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If this is the future, is SEO dead? What is the point of a website if there is going to be 2-4 full layers of above the fold content? Even if your page is ranking one, you still have to get through AI, local service ads, Google Business, and the ads in Google Business results before you get to that ranking. At best you get aggregated into the AI search results and may get a click if someone wants the citation.

Are we in a AEO and LSA model or death moving forward?