The Times and Money Saving Expert website homepages on 7 January 2026
The Times, Substack and Money Saving Expert were among the winners from a “rough” Google core update rolled out in December.
However, many major newsbrands published in the UK saw their prominence in Google search results fall sharply, including: The Guardian, The Telegraph, The New York Times and The Independent, according to Sistrix search visibility data.
The Google core algorithm update rollout took place between 11 December and 29 December. Google described it as a “regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites”.
It was the fourth major Google algorithm update in 2025, following core updates in March and June and a rollout in August specifically targeting breaches of the platform’s spam policies. Most UK news websites were also negatively impacted by the June update according to our previous analysis.
More than two-thirds of major news websites saw search visibility drop in December Google core update
Of the 75 news websites analysed by Press Gazette, 23 (31%) saw their Sistrix search visibility score increase during the December core update while the rest saw a drop.
The most notable increases in search visibility score were at Martin Lewis’s Money Saving Expert (aa change in score of 8.2 points to 92.1, up 10%), Substack ‘s network (score up 4.6 points or 33% to 18.9), The Times (score up 2.7 points or 21% to 15.9) and the Mirror (up 2.1 points or 14% to 17.5).
The Times transitioned to a .com domain in 2024 and SEO consultant for news publishers Barry Adams noted the site “was probably overdue a positive correction after their major migration… Congrats to their SEO team, they’ve rebuilt the site’s visibility well since the migration.”
Sistrix’s Visibility Index measures how visible a website is in Google search results, assigning higher scores to sites that rank better in search results.
The score draws on organic (unpaid) search results and does not include Top Stories boxes, AI Overviews or the Discover news feed.
The news websites included in Press Gazette’s analysis are mainly based on those that make regular appearances in our ranking of the top 50 biggest newsbrands in the UK , with some additions to represent a good cross-section of the industry.
Four sites saw a double-digit drop in their search visibility score: The Guardian (down 30 points to a score of 228.9), The Telegraph (down 19 points to 43.9), The New York Times (down 12 points to 53.3) and The Independent (down 11 points to 51.1).
BBC News saw a drop of seven points to 34 while Sky News (16.9), Techradar (23.1), Yahoo Finance (10.6) and Reuters (9) all saw drops of about four points.
The Sun (30.2) and Daily Mail (34.7) were next with drops of 2.7 and 2.6 points respectively.
More than half of sites saw a double-digit percentage decline
In percentage terms, more than half (39) of the sites analysed saw double-digit declines in their visibility scores. They were led by The Spectator, down 64% to a score of 0.9, and Lancs Live, down 56% to a score of 0.2. Among sites with higher visibility scores, Reuters was down 31% while The Telegraph dipped by 30%.
Despite seeing the biggest drop, The Guardian remained the site with by far the highest search visibility score. The second-highest behind it was Money Saving Expert, followed by The New York Times and The Independent.
Adams described it as a “rough update” for UK publishers and an “extra kick in the teeth” for those that had previously been hit by Google’s site reputation abuse penalties affecting those who used third-party commercial content to build e-commerce revenues.
Adams noted: “Now, this data is from Sistrix which measures visibility in regular results and doesn’t monitor Top Stories traffic. In my experience though, these visibility graphs tend to correlate well with actual search traffic trends.
“Publishers will need to find ways to reclaim their search visits. Google is and will continue to be the largest single traffic driver to most websites, especially news publishers. The space is narrowing, so competition for visibility and clicks will become ever fiercer.”
Outside Press Gazette’s list of news websites, Sistrix analysis found that other winners from the core update included thesaurus.com (up 55.6 points or 24% to a score of 284) and review site Trustpilot (up 31.5 points or 39% to 112.7).
Glenn Gabe, an SEO consultant at G-Squared, wrote in a blog that news publishers in the US and globally appeared to experience “major volatility” as a result of the “huge” core update and said he had spoken to “several large publishers” who had dropped “heavily” down search results pages.
Gabe said finance and health sites, including some major brands, also saw “massive volatility”.
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