If your traffic moved between Sep 24 and Oct 8, this is probably why. I went through Google’s dashboard notes, their documentation and the rank-tracker data. Here’s a no-hype summary.
Quick facts
- Started Sep 24, finished Oct 8. Total rollout: 13 days 16 hours.
- It’s the 4th spam update of 2026, after March, June and August.
- The earlier 2026 spam updates each finished in under 3 days. March took less than a day.
- Google called it a “normal spam update” for all languages and locations, with no policy changes announced.
- Volatility came in three waves: Sep 25–27, around Sep 30, and Oct 4–7.
Why so many spam updates this year?
At Search Central Live in Europe, Google said the increase comes from a huge surge in new content being published, and that it’s using AI to catch spam at scale. Google hasn’t said this update specifically targeted AI content. But if your site publishes lots of templated or mass-produced pages, you are in the zone these systems are built to scan.
One policy change many people missed
Google’s spam policies now explicitly include attempts to manipulate generative AI answers in Search, meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode. Gaming AI answers is now treated the same as gaming rankings. The policy does not say AI-written content is automatically spam. Low-value content made mainly to rank is the problem, whatever tool wrote it.
Spam update vs core update
A core update re-evaluates quality across the web. A spam update improves Google’s automated detection (SpamBrain) to enforce specific spam policies. Different causes need different fixes, so diagnose before you change anything.
How to tell if you were actually hit
- In Search Console, compare three windows: about 2 weeks before Sep 24, Sep 24 to Oct 8, and after Oct 8. Check whether your drops line up with the wave dates.
- Open the Manual Actions report. If it’s empty, any impact was algorithmic. There’s no notification and no reconsideration request for an algorithmic spam update.
- Rule out other causes: seasonality, broken tracking, server or crawl errors, recent site changes, or AI Overviews taking clicks for your queries. A dip during the window doesn’t automatically mean the update caused it.
- Go page-level. If the losses are concentrated in a cluster of thin, templated or near-duplicate pages, that’s a strong signal.
If you were hit, what actually helps
- Audit against Google’s spam policies: scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, expired domain abuse, cloaking, hidden text and link spam.
- Improve, merge or noindex thin pages instead of panic-deleting half your site.
- Be patient. Google says recovery can come once its systems learn over a period of months that your site complies. Anyone promising a 2-week recovery is guessing.
- For updates aimed specifically at link spam, Google says fixes may not bring improvement, because the value of those links is simply neutralized. This update wasn’t described as a link spam update.
What’s next?
People are already asking if a core update is coming. There’s no reliable pattern. In March 2026 a core update came just 3 days after the spam update, but that doesn’t always happen. Keep an eye on the Google Search Status Dashboard.
Disclosure: I run a SEO agency (NexaTraffic) in Jaipur, and since late September we’ve been doing a lot of before/after audits for sites asking whether they were hit. Not linking anything here. Happy to answer questions about specific patterns in the comments.
What did you see? Did your drops line up with the wave dates, or did you come out ahead?