Google has completed the rollout of the August 2025 spam update, following a 27-day rollout cycle. This update started on August 26, 2025 and 12 pm ET, and was completed on September 22, 2025. This was a broad spam update, not a link spam update and was a pretty big and widespread update, similar to the December 2024 spam update but took 20 days longer to rollout.
As a reminder, the August 2025 spam update started on August 26, 2025 at around 12:00 pm ET. Google said it will take a few weeks to rollout and it applies globally and to all languages. Then Google told us on Sunday the rollout will be completed probably Monday, which makes you think it was done already. We saw the update hit fast and hard a day or two later (August 27th) and it remained heated for some time, only to cool a bit for a few days. Then around Septmeber 9, 2025, the spam updated heated up again.
Keep me mind, Google dropped the num parameter to see more search results on a page, then the third-party tools scraping became severely impacted and many saw impression declines in Search Console (Search Console is also a mess). Google later confirmed the num parameter is not officially supported.
So tracking the end of this Google update, after September 10th or so, was almost impossible.
August 2025 Google Spam Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google August 2025 Spam Update
- Launched: August 26, 2025 at about 12:00 pm ET
- Rollout: Completed on September 22, 2025 at about 2am ET.
- Targets: Sites violating some of the Google search spam policies.
- Does Not Target: This update does not target link spam, it does not target the site reputation abuse policy and some other policies.
- Penalty: It penalizes some of spam techniques that are against Google's spam policies.
- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions and languages.
- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, Google said you should review its spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.
- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to the spam update. It can take many months to recover, Google said.
What Google Said
Google didn't say much but did write:
Released the August 2025 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take a few weeks to complete.
Then at 2:14 am ET on September 22nd, 26 days, 15 hours after the rollout was announced, Google wrote:
The rollout was complete as of September 22, 2025.
Google also posted this on X:
Today we released the August 2025 spam update.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) August 26, 2025
It may take a few weeks to complete, and we'll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done:https://t.co/VyY24LVujq
There is nothing specifically new about this update, outside of Google saying they are running it again. There are no changes to its documentation around this update, but I do suspect Google modified its spam algorithm a bit.
Tracking Tools On August 2025 Spam Update
Here are what the tools showed over this update, but keep in mind, the tools are a mess for a nice number of these days. From September 11th onwards, the tools had to recalibrate.
Wiredboard's Aggregator of Tools - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
SEO Chatter On August 2025 Spam Update
The chatter is a bit all over the place, we covered a lot of the earlier chatter, with the most significant impact period, in our earlier stories. But here is some of the more recent chatter but keep in mind, the third party tracking tools and Search Console reporting was changed, so it is weird chatter. The chatter below is from WebmasterWorld and here:
OK, for the last two days something is really off. Google sends 90% of traffic to only one page. This page is set to noindex. In Google Search Console it is listed as found but currently not crawled.
Anyone else noticing a huge nosedive in impressions starting last Sunday?
Yes. Starting Sept 10th. Off a cliff.
I guess the drop last week was real and the num parameter thing has nothing to do with it... Most serp or rank checkers are fixed and working as normal, and my drops stayed... there was no recovery.I will start sending out resumes tomorrow...
It's been a long time since I commented here. This recent search update made indexing so hard for small tech sites like mine.Are you guys also experiencing indexing issues. In the initial weeks of the search update, indexing was somewhat smooth. After that, indexing became elusive.
I might be looking at this wrong....am I?This seems to be one of the better things Google has done since Sept 23.
As a publisher, I don't need the web scraping and tracking tools. They are for SEO'rs to do everything they do to get the competition data, and as a small publisher I am not one of their clients - they're after bigger media clients than me.
I would think that the data they are scraping from the smaller sites is used towards helping these bigger companies rank.
I can get by with GSC, GA and my own research, plus a broad knowledge of what my users want, so if all these tools become less useful for these SEO'rs (they cant do my work as they don't have the time or expertise) - it has to be a good thing.
Anything that blocks or reduces the ability for those to scale up from scraping the net however many 1000s of times a day, has to be a good thing - for those that know how to do their thing without scraping .
Am I missing something on a loss for publishers with this or what? or is it only affecting SEO'rs and competition data hunters? If it is the latter - then good riddance - more please!
Is anyone else seeing a significant drop in impressions starting around September 10? Could this be a Search Console bug, or something broader?
ecom ones overall ok
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) September 22, 2025
non English language publishers (French/German results) lost some positions
And in AU results property investment related positions were boosted which is great 😊
This is our average position (Aug 26 – Sep 22) pic.twitter.com/1jlOvW8s1y
— PriceTimeline (@pricetimeline) September 22, 2025
Who can tell all the tools are broke :)
— Craig Mullins (@ravetildon) September 22, 2025
Impressions cut in half, clicks holding steady across numerous websites. Small and large. Did I get hit with spam penalties, or is this normal.. hmmm pic.twitter.com/kxMDjLFszw
— DSeymour (@DSeymoursLife) September 22, 2025
Previous Google Spam Updates
Here are the documented previous spam updates:
- June 2021 spam update on June 23, 2021 - one day rollout
- June 2021 spam update on June 28, 2021 - one day rollout
- July 2021 link spam update started on July 26, 2021 and completed 29 days later on August 24, 2021
- November 2021 spam update started on November 3, 2021 and completed 8 days later on November 11, 2021
- October 2022 spam update started on October 19, 2022 and completed 48 hours later on October 21, 2022
- December 2022 link spam update started on December 14, 2022 and completed 19 days later on January 12, 2023
- October 2023 spam update started on October 4, 2023 and completed 15 days later on October 20, 2023
- March 2024 spam update started on March 5, 2024 and completed 15 days later on March 20, 2024
- June 2024 spam update started on June 20, 2024 and completed 7 days later on June 27, 2024
- December 2024 spam update started on December 19, 2024 and completed 7 days later on December 26, 2024.
Forum discussion at X and WebmasterWorld.
