Google concludes its September spam update

In two weeks, Google has wrapped up its fourth spam update of the year. After announcing its rollout on September 24, the search engine published a brief comment on social media simply stating that “The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026.” This was not Google’s fastest update: in March, it completed one in just a single day.

If you have done your homework, you should not notice any negative impact; in fact, you could gain positions if this update hurts your competitors. That said, if you have not done things properly and your website takes a hit, it is time to be patient. Google itself warns that recovery can take months.

The importance of spam updates for the algorithm’s health

Let us remember that Google’s spam updates are specific improvements that Google rolls out periodically to detect practices aimed at manipulating search results and to reduce the visibility of pages that violate its spam policies. Their main goal is to ensure that the content users find is high-quality and genuinely useful, while reducing the visibility of websites that do not follow its best practices.

In essence, these updates focus on identifying tactics that go against Google’s guidelines. This includes practices such as:

• Keyword stuffing: Using an excessive number of keywords in an attempt to rank content.
• Automatically generated content: Creating irrelevant content automatically.
• Manipulative links: Using unethical strategies to obtain links that improve a website’s rankings.

In addition, spam updates do not focus only on known practices, but also adapt to new techniques as they emerge. This includes detecting content generated at scale by artificial intelligence without quality oversight, as well as the abuse of expired domains to manipulate search rankings.

Image: ChatGPT