How Google’s Latest Algorithm Update Affects Lawyer SEO

Google’s latest core algorithm update was a big one for lawyers. This was the third and final core update of 2025.

While Google is constantly making tweaks to its search algorithm, core updates are the most significant and really tend to shake up the rankings.

So if your law firm website recently experienced a drop in traffic or volatility, this was likely the reason. Here’s what you need to know.

Why This Google Algorithm Update is So Significant For Law Firms

The December 2025 core algorithm update was a broad ranking system update that’s ultimately designed to produce more relevant and satisfying content for users across all websites. But law firms are facing the strictest scrutiny because they fall into Google’s YMYL (Your Money Your Life) category.

And while Google hasn’t officially stated that the update targeted YMYL websites, you can easily read between the lines to see that’s exactly what’s happening here.

New data from ALM Corp also backs this theory. They analyzed 847 websites across 23 categories and found that 67% of YMYL content was affected.

The concept here is quite simple. If Google can’t clearly verify that you’re a bar-certified lawyer who is knowledgeable and has the experience to share insights on a particular subject, they’re not going to rank your content high in the search results.

In theory, it’s the same type of standards they’re using to ensure any Average Joe with a website can’t give medical advice that ranks on page one. That’s reserved for authoritative medical sites clearly authored by board-certified physicians.

Google wants to be extra cautious about results where inaccurate information can genuinely cause harm to people searching for answers, and legal websites are understandably caught in these crosshairs, as Google is holding you to the highest of standards.

The Update’s Timing Matters For Tracking Purposes

I think that the timing of Google’s latest algorithm update needs to be taken into consideration as you’re analyzing your search traffic.

The update began rolling out on December 11, 2025, and Google said that it would likely take three weeks to complete. Then on December 29, 2025, they announced the rollout was complete (a couple days ahead of schedule).

This is right in the thick of the holiday season, when traffic across lots of different legal categories is going to be down regardless.

Unless someone needs a lawyer ASAP (criminal or personal injury), most people likely aren’t dealing with any estate planning or divorces right now, and virtually all commercial contract law needs are nonexistent with so many companies taking time off.

So I don’t think it’s fair to say that your last few weeks of data can be used just yet to determine if you’ve been impacted.

You Need to Continue Monitoring Data in the Coming Months

The next three months are going to give you a clear indication of whether your law firm’s website was impacted by the update.

There are really only three possible scenarios:

You lost traffic and dropped rankings
Your traffic increased and rankings jumped
Your site was unaffected

Traffic aside, I think lead volume and quality is way more important for law firms.

Let’s say that your traffic drops by 50% in the next three months. If your organic lead volume remains unchanged, then it tells you the traffic you lost wasn’t driving any real revenue to your firm regardless.

You can also take this a step further to look at traffic of individual pages (particularly your top 25 traffic sources).

See if you can assess trends at the page level to determine if traffic increased, decreased, or stayed the same at the page level. This can help you figure out if certain types of content were penalized while others were rewarded.

For example, you might lose your position for thin landing pages that are keywords stuffed with location-based terms for local SEO. But your in-depth blogs that were genuinely authored by experienced attorneys at your firm may have jumped from page three to one.

What to Do if Your Traffic Drops

If your law firm website lost traffic as a result of Google’s December 2025 core algorithm update, don’t hit the panic button just yet.

The first thing you need to do is identify the cause of the drop. Google doesn’t directly tell you this unless you’re hit with a manual penalty (which you can check in Search Console under Security & Manual Actions).

Google provides a list of questions you can ask to self-assess the quality of your content. It’s worth looking at this if you’ve never seen it before.

But for this particular algorithm update, I think you should start here:

Make sure you have clear author credentials that highlight trust, authority, and expertise.
Avoid publishing AI-generated slop or thin content that lacks the depth of knowledge.
Run a technical SEO audit to ensure everything is running smoothly on the backend when Google is crawling and indexing your site.
Go the extra mile and share original, unique insights that aren’t just scraped and repurposed forms of content that exist elsewhere on the web.

Google has publicly stated on more than one occasion that they aren’t penalizing AI-generated content.

But I think the December 2025 core algorithm update did just that.

While AI content wasn’t technically penalized in the form of a manual action against a website, it’s clear that Google is getting much better at detecting AI writing. And using “extensive automation to produce content” and “summarizing what others say without adding much value” are two things that Google is saying you need to avoid.

According to ALM Corp, copy/paste 85% to 95% of AI-generated content lost traffic from this core algorithm update. Even “lightly edited” AI content dropped by 60% to 80%.

So if your law firm was relying on AI to produce content at scale without actually providing depth, human insights, and real case studies to support claims, then that’s likely a major reason why you lost traffic.

How Long Will it Take to Recover Traffic?

Core algorithm updates take longer to recover from, and for YMYL categories like law firms, I’d say it will easily take 6-12 months for a possible recovery. At the absolute earliest, you can start to see a recovery in the 2-6 months if your content is genuinely good and you just need to make some small tweaks.

That’s assuming you’re actually going to take steps to improve whatever it is you’re doing wrong on your website.

But simply adding an author bio tomorrow with your attorney’s credentials to every blog post isn’t going to miraculously cause your traffic to spike by 600% (though this is still something you should do if you haven’t already).

If you’re not sure what exactly caused your traffic to drop, then reach out to me and I’ll happily audit your site with my team to see what we can uncover for you.

Impact On Other Traffic Sources

As of right now it doesn’t look like Google’s algorithm update has any spillover effect on other traffic sources. So if your law firm was getting leads and traffic elsewhere, you should still be good.

Data aside, you can check this quickly just be running some of your most important keywords through other search engines and AI models:

Bing
DuckDuckGo
ChatGPT
Claude
Perplexity

If you’re still appearing in those search results or you’re being cited as a source for the AI models, that’s a good sign that you can still get non-Google traffic.

It’s also worth checking to see if you’re appearing at all in Google’s AI overviews.

For example, maybe you lost traffic on a particular key page. But now Google is using it as a reference in its AI overviews for certain searches. That could also be the culprit and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

You might have lost clicks because Google summarized the answer without people needing to visit your website. So while you may miss the traffic, it’s a great sign that Google still trusts your site enough to use it in AI overviews.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been around long enough to know that while no two core algorithm updates are the same, what happens next is usually predictable.

Barring a manual penalty or blatant black-hat SEO, there’s a clear path to recovery once you identify exactly what caused any drop in traffic.

This particular update was the most important for law firms that I recall in recent memory. It seems like Google is finally following through with what they’ve been telling us to do for years.

If your content isn’t unique, original, and written by a legitimate expert with industry expertise, you’ve got no chance of ranking for highly competitive keywords in the legal space. And mass-produced AI content won’t work either.