Two core updates, and next year's local budget

Google closed the November core update on the 5th of this month and started a December one on Thursday the 12th. Two broad quality updates inside nine days, at the point in the year when nobody has the patience for either.

So the honest answer to “should we react to this” is no, not this week. Rankings will move for a fortnight and then most of them will move back. What December is actually for is the budget conversation, and that conversation has changed shape more this year than in the previous three put together.

This is what we are planning around for next year, for the businesses we work with directly and for the agencies we fulfil for. And then the part nobody writes up, which is everything that stayed exactly the same.

What December has done so far

The November update finished on the 5th. Google started a new core update on the 12th and says it will take a couple of weeks, which puts the end of it somewhere in the holidays.

Practical advice for the next three weeks, and we give the same advice every time:

• Do not rewrite anything while an update is rolling. You will not be able to separate your change from Google’s.
• Write down where you sat before the 12th. A handful of queries that matter, your map pack positions, your call volume by week. Without a before, there is no after.
• Keep publishing whatever you were already publishing.
• If you dropped in November and have not recovered, that is a content quality conversation for January, not an emergency this week.

The other December news is on the answer side rather than the ranking side. Gemini 2.0 landed on the 11th, OpenAI has been shipping something every weekday, and ChatGPT’s search feature opened up at the end of October. Nothing there needs a response from a dental practice this month. It does need a line in next year’s budget, which is the next section.

What we are budgeting for next year

Five lines, roughly in the order we would fund them.

1. Answering the phone. This is the biggest change in how we spend a local business’s money. AI voice answering went from demos to a switch inside the platforms we already run this year, and the accounts where we turned it on for after hours and overflow are booking work that used to go to voicemail. We are budgeting for the setup, the scripting, and the monthly usage, which meters by the minute and spikes exactly when you are busiest. Not as a replacement for the front desk. As the thing that catches what the front desk cannot.

2. Measurement that does not depend on anyone else. Chrome cancelled the cookie deprecation in July, which took the panic out of the calendar but not the problem. Attribution keeps getting blurrier, and the only numbers that held up across every account we run this year came from our own systems: calls recorded and tagged, forms tied to a source, booked appointments matched back to the lead. Budget the CRM work, not another dashboard.

3. Being recommended, not just ranked. AI Overviews have been in the results since May, and people now ask a chat window for a recommendation the way they used to ask a search box. We have no reliable lever on it, and anyone selling you one is guessing. What we can see is that the pages getting pulled in are specific, answer a question in the first two sentences, and belong to a business with a well maintained profile and real reviews. That is the same work as local search, pointed at a different surface, which is how we are pricing visibility in AI answers rather than as a separate product.

4. Photography and video. Every competitor in town now has access to the same writing tools, so text is no longer where you separate yourself. A half day with a photographer, or a phone and a tripod and a monthly habit, is the cheapest differentiation left.

5. Reviews, run properly. The FTC rule took effect in October. The process has to be: ask everyone, the same way, no gating, no incentives, no staff reviews, and reply to everything. That is cheap, and it is one of the few things you fully control.

For agencies planning the same year, the margin question sits underneath all five. The AI pieces are bundled into the platforms now, so the value you sell is the setup, the scripting and the monthly supervision, not access. Price the supervision or it gets done for free.

The three things that did not change

Every December the industry talks as though the ground shifted. Some of it did. These did not, and they still decide more revenue than everything above.

1. Proximity still decides the map pack. Someone searching from four towns over mostly gets the businesses in their four towns. No amount of content changes where your building is. It is why a second location beats a hundred town pages, and why we keep saying no to the town pages.
2. The business that answers first gets the job. Speed to lead has been the strongest predictor of booked work in our accounts since we started measuring it, through every algorithm change on this page. Five minutes, not five hours.
3. The profile is still the storefront. Categories, hours, services, photos, reviews, replies. It has been the highest return half hour a week in local marketing for as long as we have done this, and nothing this year moved it.

If the budget only covers those three, it is a better year than most.

What we are telling clients

• Do nothing about the December update until it finishes. Record where you stand now.
• Set holiday hours everywhere and decide who answers the phone between Christmas and New Year.
• Put one line in next year’s budget for after hours call handling before you add anything else.
• Move your measurement into systems you own: call tracking, form sources, booked work written back to the lead.
• Book the photographer in January, while the schedule is still soft.
• Fix the review process now so the compliant version is the normal version by spring.

January is when the benefits have reset, the furnaces fail and the deferred work comes back. The budget you write in the next two weeks decides whether you can answer it. If you want help sorting the lines, that is the conversation we have every December, both directly with owners and behind the scenes for the agencies we do white-label work for, and it nearly always starts with who picks up the phone.