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Google begins the September 2026 spam update

the desk lamp just went out

Google has started another spam update and the bunker is already full of confident guesses about what it will hit

leave the guesses on the floor

THE SIGNAL

Google began the September 2026 spam update on September 24 at 9:15 a.m. Pacific, or 12:15 p.m. Eastern. Its Search Status Dashboard says the update applies globally and to all languages. Google says the rollout may take up to two weeks; it has not marked the incident complete.

ON THE RECORD

  • Google Search Central called this a normal spam update. Its announcement did not name a particular spam tactic, type of site, or affected query group.
  • Google's standing spam-update guidance says its automated spam-detection systems operate continuously. It announces a spam update when it makes a notable improvement to those systems. The guidance does not reveal what changed inside this release.
  • Google says sites that see a change after a spam update should review its spam policies. That advice is a starting point for a measured investigation, not evidence that any one site has violated a policy.

STILL STATIC

We do not yet know what behavior this update is meant to catch, which sites or queries it will affect, or how much movement will persist after rollout. A drop that appears near September 24 is a lead, not proof of cause. The update is global, but that does not mean its effects will be uniform.

There is one piece of newsroom gossip worth testing. In the discussion under Google's announcement, SEO practitioner Lily Ray wondered whether the "grey area" tactics that kept ranking after August might be exposed this time. That is a question, not a finding. Álvaro Peña de Luna's early Spanish ranking sample shows why we should wait: its first post-launch day was rougher than normal, but a day before the update was rougher still. Neither observation identifies a target.

DON'T TOUCH THE WIRES

If you manage a site that depends on Google Search, open the Search Console Performance report for Web Search. Save a September 10-23 baseline for your important page and query groups, with country and device filters where they matter. Export the same views for September 24 onward as complete data becomes available. Look for a sustained change in the same group after the launch boundary, then investigate the pages and relevant spam policies. One unsettled day is not a reason to rewrite pages, change canonicals, prune content, or disavow links.

Seeing a possible hit? Send the affected URL or page type, query, country, device, when the change began with time zone, and a before-and-after Search Console export. Include any site changes made during the same period.