Google's September spam update could run for two weeks

What launched and when

Google's September 2026 spam update went live at 9:15 am PDT on 24 September and applies to every language and every location. Google expects the rollout to take up to two weeks to complete, making it the longest-running spam update the company has run all year.^[1]

Google Search Central announced the update on LinkedIn: "Today we released the September 2026 spam update to Google Search. 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."^[6]

What Google is targeting

Spam updates focus on deceptive techniques that try to manipulate search rankings or mislead users, rather than reassessing general content quality the way a core update does. Google's published spam policies list cloaking (showing search engines different content than users see), doorway pages (content created purely to rank for specific queries before redirecting users elsewhere), scaled content abuse (producing large volumes of low-value content to game rankings), and user-generated spam as the main categories it acts against.^[5]

Google's spam policy documentation says sites that break its policies "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all".^[5] That consequence applies during and after any spam update, not only in the days immediately following the rollout.

How this compares to earlier 2026 updates

Three spam updates preceded this one in 2026, and all three moved quickly. The March 2026 update ran from 12:18 pm PDT on 24 March to 7:39 am PDT on 25 March, under 20 hours from start to finish.^[2] June's update started at 9:03 am PDT on 24 June and wrapped at 10:58 am PDT on 26 June, a run of about two days.^[3] The August update began at 9:28 am PDT on 18 August and ended at 1:49 am PDT on 21 August, just under two days and 16 hours.^[4]

At up to two weeks, the September update is approximately six times longer than the longest spam update Google ran in the preceding eight months of 2026. That scale changes how useful Search Console data looks during the rollout: traffic can drop, recover, and drop again while the update works through Google's index, none of which reliably indicates where a site will land once it finishes.

What Australian site owners should do now

Search Console's performance reports, the clicks and impressions graphs most agencies and site owners watch daily, update in batches rather than in real time. A drop visible today may reflect data from several days ago, and a recovery tomorrow may vanish by the end of the week if the update continues pushing through.

The main risk with an extended rollout is a premature response. A site owner who sees a 30 per cent traffic drop on day three and immediately restructures their content may be reacting to a mid-rollout fluctuation, not to Google's final position on their site. Google's own guidance is to avoid making major site-wide changes or repeatedly submitting recrawl requests while an update runs. Check the Coverage report in Search Console for any newly flagged pages, but treat any shifts in rankings as provisional until Google confirms the update has finished.

Google has not given a specific end date beyond the up-to-two-weeks estimate published at launch, so Australian agencies advising clients on organic search performance should set that expectation with clients before any traffic questions arrive.^[1]