December, normally a pretty slow month in the Google organic SEO world, at least in 2017 was super busy, again, this was unusual. The big things that happened over the past month was of course the confirmed Google updates we named the Maccabees updates that seemed to target keyword permutations as well as Fred like stuff and even hit some celebrity sites. We also saw a PBN penalty roll out and maybe a featured snippets/knowledge graph algorithm update. No, we are not done.

Google added a year plus of data to Search Console, after years and years of promising it. Google published voice search quality raters guidelines, updated their SEO starter guide after several years and posted official advice on the mobile first index. Google also extended their snippets and said you can make your meta descriptions longer and released a new rich results testing tool.

John Mueller said nofollow all links in guest posts, he started a new awesome SEO snippets video series, and was super busy helping webmasters on Christmas. Danny Sullivan promised more communication and he will not keep quiet. And Google's former CEO and current Executive Chairman is stepping down.

So yea, it was a pretty busy December for Google.

Currently, the ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is pretty slow, which is a nice thing. But to see the last webmaster report click here.

Here is the recap of the past month:

Google Algorithm Updates & Shifts:

Google Search Console:Google SEO:Google Links:Google User Interface:Google Maps:Industry:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.