Google Maccabee – Google Algorithm Changes

Updated March 3, 2025

Rebel Alliance

You weren’t the only person busy over the festive period. The team at Google have also been quietly releasing updates. This series of updates, over Hanuka – hence the name, has been named Maccabee and all of the major webmaster tools are showing big changes to the SERP.

Maccabee Changes

As always with a big update from Google, we recommend you take a look at your Search Console to see if your ranking has been affected by Google’s changes. Most of the sites that have noticed something found that their ranking and traffic dropped around the 11th of December. So make sure you take a look at your data to see if you’ve been caught up in Maccabee madness. Some sites have seen up to 30% drops in traffic, so it’s important to be on top of things.

Keeping Up With the Kardashians

At first, it seems the major hit has been taken by celebrities with their own websites. Their sites have dropped down the front page below social media profiles and Wikipedia pages. This is an interesting development as it may hint that Google is now counting social media juice as part of their ranking formula. Or it could just be because more people want to visit John Lennon’s Wikipedia page than his official website.

Have you noticed a drop in traffic since Google’s Maccabee update?