Google released the September 2026 spam update on 24th Sep 2026 at 16:15 UTC. It announced it on the Search Status Dashboard, on LinkedIn and through Search Central's usual channels.
The dashboard incident reads: "Released the September 2026 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete."
Google's LinkedIn post, as quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, calls it "a normal spam update". Google says it will update its ranking release history page when the rollout is complete.
Google marked it complete at 08:00 UTC on 8th Oct. That makes the rollout 13 days, 15 hours and 45 minutes end to end, the longest spam update of 2026.
The window Google gave is the surprise. The three earlier 2026 spam updates were in March, June and August.
They finished in 19 hours 30 minutes, 2 days 1 hour and 2 days 16 hours.
Barry Schwartz asked John Mueller whether "two weeks" was a typo. Mueller replied on Bluesky: "Yes, it's likely to take longer than some of the previous ones."
Two weeks would still be short by older standards. The August 2025 spam update, the only one that year, took 26 days 15 hours.
What Google has said about the target is, again, mostly a list of exclusions. Per Search Engine Roundtable, the update targets sites violating some of Google's spam policies.
It does not target link spam. Google named no change from earlier spam updates.
Google would not say what percentage of queries or searches it affects. It also said it will run periodic refreshes of the spam update.
So movement can continue after the announced rollout window closes. Google repeated that recovery from a spam demotion can take many months.
Many people reported heavy ranking swings on 23rd and 24th Sep, before the announcement. Search Engine Roundtable's note is that "the volatility you saw prior to the announcement was not it".
That matches what Mueller said in August: Google does not roll updates out before announcing them. Movement before 24th Sep is a separate event.
A spam update, unlike a core update, leaves something specific to look for.
If your traffic moved from 24th Sep, start with Google's spam policies. These are the categories that most often catch legitimate-looking sites.
- Hacked content.
- Scraped content.
- Doorway pages.
- Expired-domain abuse.
- Scaled content abuse.
Google has ruled out link spam here. So a demotion in this window points elsewhere in that list.
There is no reconsideration request for an algorithmic spam demotion. The fix has to be made and then re-crawled and re-assessed over time.
Google's spam updates documentation puts the timescale at "a period of months" while its automated systems learn that a site complies.
