Adam Hafez
Key takeaways
- Search Engine Roundtable says rank-volatility tools showed heavy movement from 25 to 27 September 2026, with the biggest spike on Saturday.
- These are third-party tool readings and practitioner observations, not figures from Google.
- Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray reported drops on templated, programmatic and AI-generated pages, which are their observations and not a Google statement.
- Google's status dashboard shows the update released on 24 September 2026 at 09:15 Pacific time and says the rollout may take up to two weeks.
- The dashboard showed no completion entry when we checked on 1 October 2026, so the update is still rolling out.
Search Engine Roundtable reported on 28 September 2026 that the September 2026 spam update was felt heavily over the weekend. Its reading of the volatility tools was movement from Friday 25 September, more on Saturday 26 September, ending on Sunday 27 September. Barry Schwartz added that the volatility might be calming a bit by Monday.
Is the spam update finished?
No. Google’s Search Status Dashboard records the release on 24 September 2026 at 09:15 Pacific time and says the rollout may take up to two weeks. When we checked on 1 October 2026 there was no completion entry. Our September 2026 spam update page tracks the status, and the launch report covers what Google announced.
What did the tools show?
Schwartz charted AccuRanker, Algoroo, AWR, CognitiveSEO, DataForSEO, Mangools, Mozcast, Semrush, Serpstat, SimilarWeb, Sistrix, Wincher and Zutrix, plus Wireboard’s aggregate of them. He pointed to the Saturday volatility in these tools. These are third-party readings of ranking movement, not Google data, and Google has published no impact figures.
Who is reporting drops, and where?
- Glenn Gabe said on 28 September that he was seeing big drops across a number of sites, across verticals and countries. On 25 September he said Grokipedia dropped even more with the mid-September volatility.
- Gabe also described sites he groups as “Mt. AI” and “Mt. Programmatic”.
- Lily Ray said she saw early signs of the update hitting highly templated, programmatic and probably AI-generated pages, such as one page for every phone number and area code.
Those are their observations from the sites they watch. Google has not said what the update targets. Schwartz suspects several tactics will be hit, not one, and says these updates seem to have more impact than older spam updates, which is his impression and not a measurement.
What should site owners do now?
Do not act on a drop yet, because the rollout is still open. Google’s spam updates documentation says to review its spam policies and fix what does not comply. Compare your own data against the days before 24 September once the dashboard posts an end, and see our spam policy enforcement report for the policies Google enforces.
The evidence
- Type
- algorithm update
- Impact
- high
- Affects
- rankings, organic traffic, spam policies
Sources
- 1.Google September 2026 Spam Update Has Big Weekend Impact - Search Engine Roundtable, September 28, 2026Primary
- 2.Ranking incident details: September 2026 spam update - Google Search Status DashboardPrimary
- 3.Google Search spam updates - Google Search CentralPrimary
Frequently asked questions
Has the September 2026 spam update finished?
No. Google's Search Status Dashboard lists only the release entry from 24 September 2026 and says the rollout may take up to two weeks. We found no completion entry on 1 October 2026.
What is the September 2026 spam update targeting?
Google has not said. Its dashboard note says only that the update applies globally and to all languages. Practitioners report templated and programmatic pages, which are their observations.
Are the volatility numbers from Google?
No. They come from third-party rank-tracking tools, which Search Engine Roundtable charted. Google publishes no impact figures for spam updates.
What should I do if my traffic dropped?
Wait for the rollout to finish, then compare your data against the days before 24 September. Google says to review its spam policies and fix what does not comply.
About the author
Founder, UpgradIQ FZC LLC
Adam Hafez works on technical SEO and search measurement: how pages get crawled, indexed, ranked and now quoted by answer engines. He founded UpgradIQ, which reads Google Search Console and GA4 to tie ranking movement back to the changes that caused it. He publishes what the data supports and states the limits of it.
- Technical SEO
- Search Console and GA4 measurement
- Answer engine optimization
- Structured data
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