- Date
- September 24, 2026
- Kind
- Technology shift
- Significance
- Moderate
Google’s Search Status Dashboard lists a “September 2026 spam update” that started on September 24, 2026 and lasted 13 days and 16 hours. PPC Land reports that it began at 09:15 Pacific time and finished on October 8, and that it applied worldwide and to all languages.
How it compares
The dashboard lists the other 2026 spam updates as lasting about 19 hours (March), about two days (June) and about three days (August). PPC Land notes that the September run used about 98% of the two-week allowance Google had given and that an update in August 2025 lasted 27 days.
What Google has said
PPC Land reports that Google’s dashboard entry names no specific policy, tactic or share of queries affected. Search Engine Roundtable’s summary, as relayed by PPC Land, says the update does not target link spam and that Google reported no policy changes. Search Engine Roundtable recorded ranking volatility on September 25 to 27, September 30 and October 4 to 6; some site owners reported traffic losses, which are anecdotal and unverified.
Why it matters
A long, unexplained spam update is hard to act on. The useful steps are to check Search Console for manual actions, then compare traffic before September 24 with traffic now, and to note the date a change appeared before attributing it to this update or to something else.
What happened next
The update was reported as finished on October 8, 2026. Google had not named a target policy in the sources reviewed.
Sources
- Google Search Status Dashboard: Ranking incidents (summary) (opens in a new tab)
Shows the start date and duration; the page carries no status text.
- PPC Land: Google's spam update ends after nearly 14 days (opens in a new tab)