On September 24, 2026 Google started the "September 2026 spam update", the fourth anti-spam update of the year after those of March, June and August. It applies worldwide and to all languages, and the rollout can last up to two weeks. If your site's rankings are moving these days, it pays to understand why before touching anything.
What we know, and what we don't
Google has announced that the update has started, with global scope and for all languages. It has not provided details on which practices it targets in particular. Anyone who confidently lists the "real causes" of the update is guessing. What can be read with certainty are Google's spam policies, which are public and worth rereading.
What Google considers spam
The policies describe many practices. These are the most relevant for a small business's website:
- Mass-produced content: many pages created mainly to manipulate rankings, without giving value to readers.
- Scraping: content taken from other sites and republished.
- Keyword stuffing: pages filled with keywords in an unnatural way.
- Thin affiliation: listings with affiliate links and descriptions copied from the seller, with nothing added.
- Doorway pages: many similar pages created to rank for specific searches and send the user elsewhere.
- Link spam: links created mainly to push rankings, including those bought or sold without the correct qualification.
- User-generated spam: public comments and forms filled with spam messages, often without the site owner's knowledge.
- Hacked content: text or links inserted into the site without authorization, exploiting security flaws.
If your site is written by people for customers, this list usually concerns others. Two items, however, can affect those who have nothing to do with it: spam left by others in the site's comments and forms, and nearly identical pages created only to appear in searches, for example a page for every city with the same text and the name changed.
What to do these days
- Don't change everything mid-rollout. The rollout can last up to two weeks and numbers move while it's underway: deciding now means deciding on unstable data.
- Compare before and after. In Google Search Console, compare the period before September 24 with the one after the rollout ends, looking at clicks and impressions page by page and not just the total.
- Reread the least useful pages. Copied pages, mass-made pages or pages written to fill space are the first to fix or remove.
- Clean up comments and forms. If you find spam messages, delete them and add a filter.
- Check that the site hasn't been tampered with. Text or links you didn't write are a signal to take seriously.
If only some pages drop, those are the ones to reread. If they all drop together on the same day, wait for the end of the rollout before drawing conclusions.
If you've lost rankings
According to Search Engine Journal, a site that violates Google's policies may rank worse or not appear in results. If you fix it, Google may recognize the improvement over the course of months. Haste gains little, method gains a lot.
What to avoid
- Buying links or "anti-penalty" packages: bought links fall among spam practices.
- Stuffing pages with keywords to "recover": keyword stuffing is on the list.
- Having dozens of pages mass-produced to climb back: mass production without value is on the list.
The point, in short
A spam update is a good reason to do something that should be done anyway: look at the site through a customer's eyes and remove what they don't need. If you don't know where to start, tell us about your site and we'll look together at what to fix and what to leave as it is.
Sources: Search Engine Journal, September 2026 spam update and Google, Search spam policies.
Have a similar case or a doubt? Write to us at info@sarabi.cloud.