December was a pretty quiet month, like usual. Google tends to be shy when pushing out updates, but we did see several potential updates which are linked to below. Google did not go forward with Penguin 4.0 and should be pushing it this coming month.

Google began indexing HTTPS by default, they made a change to how they measure search analytics in the Google Search Console and updated a report for App Indexing. There were some issues with Google NCR that are still unresolved and John Mueller spent his holidays helping webmasters.

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread is very quiet now.

Here is the recap:

Google Updates & Penguin:
Was There A Google Update Yesterday: I’m Not Too Sure.
Small Google Update Yesterday? Webmasters Reporting Positive Traffic Signals.
Potential Google Search Update On December 16th
Google Search Ranking Update Continue : December 10th Update
Google: Confident Google Penguin 4.0 Is Good Enough For A January Release
Google: Still No Release Date For Penguin 4.0
Google Not Launching Penguin 4.0 This Year; 14+ Months Since Refresh

Google SEO:
Google Indexing HTTPS By Default
Google: You Can Expedite Processing Of Your New Robots.txt File
Google: There May Be An Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Ranking Boost
John Mueller: Fetch As Google Renders AngularJS But Cache Doesn’t Currently
Google: Links Activated By On Hover Action Are Invisible To GoogleBot
Google: You Can Remove Mass Links From Your Disavow File
Google: You Can Cloak Your XML Sitemap Files
GoogleBot Treats 307 Redirects As 301s?
Google: Capital Letters In URLs Doesn’t Impact Rankings
Google Pilots Schema To Update Your Local Business Knowledge Graph Data
Google My Business API Has Launched
Google Updates Rich Snippets For Articles Documentation For AMP
Google: Self-Signed SSL Certificate Won’t Work For HTTPS Ranking Boost
Google: Decimal Points In URLs Are A Bad Idea
Updated Search Engine Roundtable App & App Indexing Stats
SEO Tips For 2016 By Google’s John Mueller
Google Updated Their App Indexing Documentation
Google: No Technical Advantage To Splitting Up Sitemaps But Useful For Debugging
Google Rich Snippets For Articles Now Requires Author Name
Google: Avoid Using Special Characters In URLs
Google: Remove A 301 Redirect? You Need Patience & Convincing…
Large Influx This Week Of Google Manual Actions?
New Google Reconsideration Requests Language More Confusing?
Google Traffic Soars After SEO Drops Links From Disavow File
Matt Cutts Shares His Raw Notes On The Google PageRank

Google Search Console:
Google: We Are Logging Data Differently & It May Impact Search Analytics Reports
New Google Search Appearance Filter In Search Analytics Report For App Install Buttons
Google: We Don’t Forward Retroactively Your Reconsideration Requests
Google Search Console Now Showing AMP Related Errors

Google Features:
Almost Real-Time Google Featured Snippets
Google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect) Not Working For Some
Google: Google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect) Should Work Again In Future
Google Localizing Desktop Search Based On Your Phone’s Location History
Google Officially Replaces “Web” Results With “All Results” In Search

Misc:
John Mueller Helping Webmasters On Christmas With Google Questions
John Mueller Helping Webmasters On New Years With Google Questions

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.