Google has begun rolling out it's September 2026 spam update, with the global update expected to take several weeks. This is the fourth spam update of 2026, with previous updates only taking a few days to roll out, and is designed to target websites that violate Google's Spam Policy. This includes websites that aim to deceive users using cloaking, redirects, content injection, hidden text, link spam and excessive keywords. Most websites that operate honestly and with quality content will therefore not be affected by this.
"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. 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," said Google in it's documentation for this release.
The documentation goes on to say that sites that violate Google's spam policies may now not appear in search results at all and that making changes may help a site recover over a period of months.
Google routinely changes the way in which it calculates how to rank websites in search results, but most algorithm updates won't affect how your own website ranks. It's important to be aware of updates, however, since it's possible that your website could still be affected even when it is not the specific target of an update.
