June 2021 spam update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google SearchLiaison announced the update on X on 23 June 2021: “As part of our regular work to improve results, we’ve released a spam update to our systems.” It linked to its general material on fighting spam and gave no detail on which spam types the update targeted. Google’s confirmation came only on X.

Google called it “a spam update” rather than giving it a dated name; June 2021 spam update is the label used here to tell it apart from later spam updates. Google’s Danny Sullivan told Search Engine Roundtable that it was global and “currently covers web page and image results.”

When it rolled out#

Google said the first part “will conclude today,” on 23 June 2021, and that “a second one will follow next week.” On 28 June 2021 Google posted that “the second part of our spam update has has begun today, and it will also conclude later today, unless we share otherwise.” Google did not post anything further, so 28 June is the last date it stated.

Both parts landed inside the page experience update’s rollout, which ran from 15 June to 2 September 2021, and between the June and July 2021 core updates.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures and did not describe what the update changed. Treat any percentage you see attributed to it as a third-party estimate.

What site owners should do#

Google’s spam detection systems, including SpamBrain, are still in use, and its current spam update guidance says sites that see a change should review its spam policies. In practice:

• Check the site against each spam policy, such as cloaking, doorways and scaled content abuse.
• Remove or fix what violates a policy rather than waiting for the next update.
• Expect any improvement to take months, as Google’s systems learn the site now complies.

How to check whether it affected you#

Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so its reports no longer cover June 2021. Use archived analytics exports and compare the days either side of 23 June and 28 June 2021. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists the other updates of that summer, so you can rule out overlapping rollouts first.

Related updates#

• The July 2021 link spam update was the next spam update.
• The November 2021 spam update was the next general spam update.