The Google September 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Thursday, September 24, 2026 at around 12:00 pm ET and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET. This was different from the previous few spam updates in that this one took two weeks to roll out whereas the others took only two days to roll out.
Google originally announced, "Released the September 2026 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete." Google said this morning, "The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026.."
As I said, this was a two-week rollout, not a two-day rollout- so that was different. But Google said on LinkedIn, "This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations." "The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete," Google added. I am not sure why this is "normal" when it took two weeks to roll out instead of two days but what do I know.
The Impact
It seemed this spam update was pretty impactful, some are saying more core update like of an impact. I am not sure about that but I did document the impact dates of this spam update - that assumes Google didn't do any other updates over this spam update rollout period - which I do not know for sure.
Google Tracking Tools
Here is a chart showing the tools aggregated volatility (I'll update these later on today to get the more recent scores for you all to see):
Google Volatility Chart
Here are all the tools individually:
AWR:
Wireboard - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
September 2026 Google Spam Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google September 2026 Spam Update
- Launched: September 24, 2026 at about 12:00 pm ET
- Rollout: Will take about a couple of weeks to fully roll out but the volatility you saw prior to the announcement was not it.
- Completed: October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am 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 every single spam policy but Google did not mention any changes with this update.
- 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.
Here are the tweets:
The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026.
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) October 8, 2026
More On Google Spam Updates
Google's spam update documentation says:
While Google's automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.
Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.
In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement. This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost. Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained.
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.
- August 2025 spam update started on August 26, 2025 and completed 27 days later on September 22, 2025
- March 2026 spam update started on March 24, 2026 and completed a day later on March 25, 2026.
- June 2026 spam update started on June 24, 2026 and completed on June 26, 2026
- August 2026 spam update started on August 18, 2026 and completed on August 21, 2026
- September 2026 spam update started on September 24, 2026 and completed on October 8, 2026 at 4:37 am ET
How did this spam update impact you?
I would not be surprised if we get a core update really soon...
