Google's September 2026 spam update: what to check on your site

Google started rolling out the "September 2026 spam update" on 24 September 2026 at 09:15 PDT. According to the Google Search Status Dashboard, it applies globally and to all languages, and the rollout may take up to two weeks — so the effects could keep showing up into early October.

It is the fourth spam update of the year. The previous three finished within a few days; this one has a two-week window. Google has not said which type of spam it is targeting.

What is a spam update?

Google detects spam largely through SpamBrain, its AI-based spam-prevention system. A spam update means that system has been improved to catch more — or new — kinds of spam. Core updates reassess the overall quality of sites; spam updates focus specifically on pages that break Google's spam policies.

An ordinary business site that writes for its own customers and plays by the rules has little reason to worry. The sites that get hit are usually the ones taking shortcuts.

What small business sites should check

These are the patterns we see most often — frequently done with good intentions, but close to what the policies prohibit:

Pages where only the city name changes

Dozens of near-identical pages such as "plumber Camden", "plumber Hackney", "plumber Islington", where only the place name differs, sit very close to what Google calls doorway pages. If a location page has no genuinely local information, merging those pages is the safer choice.

Content produced at scale

Using AI to write is not against the rules in itself. The problem is producing hundreds of pages that add nothing for readers and exist only to take up space in search results. Google explicitly treats this as spam under "scaled content abuse".

Paid links

Links bought to influence rankings are also covered by the spam policies. One line in Google's documentation is worth remembering: any ranking benefit gained through link spam is not regained, even after those links are removed.

What to do now

Day-to-day ranking swings during a rollout are normal, so we would not make big changes to your site before the update finishes. Once it has completed, compare your Search Console Performance report before and after 24 September. If there is a clear drop, review the spam policies page by page. In Google's own words, after you fix problems it can take months for its systems to learn that a site now complies.

If you are not sure whether your site carries any of these risks, we can look at it together through a free assessment.