After a slow and even paused release, Google has said that the December 2022 Helpful Content update and the December 2022 Link Spam update have finished rolling out. Google confirmed that both were rolled out on January 12th, 2023.
FYI, both the Google link spam and helpful content update just finished rolling out https://t.co/K49f3zqGNB pic.twitter.com/lNMkrXXgsS
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 12, 2023
The Helpful Content update was launched on December 5th, 2022, and completed 38 days later. The November 2022 spam link update was launched on December 14th, 2022, and was completed 29 days later. Both updates could have been in 14 days, but it took much longer.
These two updates were delayed by a few days due to the Christmas season. Google claimed that it was due to a security concern when they completed them during the day holidays, which is why they stopped them. We noticed a shift from these updates between the 18th and 19th of December and a few major turbulent before Christmas, after which the situation eased up a bit. There were changes on December 26th and again from the 3rd and 5th of January, after which we saw a similar pattern on January 10th and the 11th.