Google's fourth spam update of the year started on 24 September. The first three were finished in one or two days. The September 2026 spam update is scheduled to take up to two weeks, and it is hitting sites in waves: 25 to 27 September first, then again on 30 September.
Edward Sturm spent episode 1,185 of his daily podcast going through what the people who track these updates are seeing: which sites dropped, which ones came back from earlier penalties, and why Reddit is suddenly winning again in several countries.
I run Distribb, and we publish content for hundreds of sites, so spam updates are the Google news I follow most closely. I watched the episode, checked every claim against the original sources, and wrote down what matters if you own a site that lives on search traffic.
What Google announced on 24 September
Google listed the update on its Search Status Dashboard on 24 September 2026 at 09:15 Pacific time. It applies globally and to all languages. The whole announcement is two sentences long, and the second one is the unusual part: "The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete."
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable put that in context. The March 2026 spam update took one day. June took two days. August took two days. September is planned for around fourteen. It is also the fourth spam update in a single year, after 2025 had only one.
Google did not name a new spam tactic or a policy change. According to Search Engine Roundtable's reporting, this one is not aimed at link spam specifically. Google's standing advice is the same as always: if you were hit, review the spam policies, and expect recovery to take months.
→ A two-week rollout means two weeks of movement. A drop on day three and a drop on day seven can come from the same update.
Phase two landed on 30 September
The first wave of drops showed up on 25, 26 and 27 September. Things calmed down for two days. Then volatility came back hard on 30 September, and Barry called it phase two.
Glenn Gabe, who documents these updates in public on X, said several site owners emailed him about large drops that started exactly on 30 September. His reading is that an update this long has stages, and that each stage can touch a different set of sites.
Edward's point here is simple and I agree with it. With a two-day update you can look at your Search Console the following week and know where you stand. With this one you cannot draw any conclusion until Google marks it complete.
→ If your traffic moved on 30 September, write the date down and wait. The picture is not final yet.
What got hit: one template, multiplied
The sites taking the lasting hits share one pattern. Edward lists them as highly templated pages, programmatic pages with little unique value, AI pages nobody reviewed, and doorway pages.
Lily Ray shared one example during the rollout: a site with 143 service pages, one per county, all built from the same template. Its traffic chart has what Edward calls the mountain pattern. It climbs fast, holds for a while, then falls just as fast.
Edward describes the mechanics with a made-up case. You write a page for "digital marketing expert in Los Angeles". You clone it for New York and Philadelphia. The only thing that changes is the city name. Google calls this a doorway page, and it has been the main target of spam updates for the past year.
The programmatic versions are more subtle. A few fields change from page to page, yet the searcher still lands on something that was clearly not written for their question. We covered the same failure from the indexing side in our programmatic SEO playbook and the indexing problem nobody plans for.
Edward also notes smaller swings on all kinds of sites, including clean ones: top of funnel, bottom of funnel, services, SaaS and e-commerce. Those are movements of a few positions. The drops that last for months are concentrated in the template group.
→ Ask of every page: if I changed the keyword in the title, would the rest of the page still read the same? If yes, that page is at risk.
How I think about scaled content at Distribb
I sell a product that publishes a lot of content, so I will be direct about where I stand. Publishing many pages is fine. Publishing the same page many times is what gets punished. Google has said that even translating with AI is fine when the content is high quality. The tool was never the problem.
That is the line Distribb is built around. You connect your site and it handles the rest:
- Keyword research for your business. Each keyword is a separate question a real person types, with its own search intent.
- A check against what you already published. New articles are compared with your library by meaning, so two posts never compete for the same query.
- Writing grounded in your site. Distribb reads what you sell and who you sell to before it writes, so claims are tied to real pages.
- Internal links, images and publishing. Every article links into your existing content and goes out to your CMS on schedule.
- Real backlinks from real businesses in your niche through the exchange, with no outreach on your side.
Pro is $97 a month for up to 30 articles. Accelerator is $495 a month for up to 90, and a human reviews every piece before it goes out. No tool can promise immunity from a Google update, and I won't either. What I can say is that nothing in the list above is a template with a city name swapped.
Reddit's translated pages are back
The strangest winner so far is Reddit. For a long time Reddit has used AI to translate its threads into other languages, and those pages ranked very well. Then they crashed with the May 2026 core update and the June 2026 spam update.
Glenn Gabe checked several countries during this rollout and found the translated pages climbing again in Italy, Germany, Brazil and France. Edward pulled up Reddit in Semrush and saw its estimated organic traffic at an all-time high.
This looks like a contradiction. Google is punishing unreviewed AI pages and rewarding AI translations in the same update. Edward's explanation is about the source. Searchers know Reddit, and they know the original thread was written by people. A translated discussion is still a discussion. A blog that auto-translates its top-of-funnel posts into ten languages offers nothing like that.
I would add one caution. Reddit has a brand and a data partnership with Google that no ordinary site has. Its recovery tells you what Google tolerates from Reddit. It does not tell you that auto-translating your blog is safe.
→ The method matters less than what the searcher gets. The same AI translation is rewarded on real discussions and punished on filler.
Sites hit by earlier updates are recovering
This is the good news in the episode. Glenn Gabe has documented several sites that were hit by earlier spam updates and are now surging during this one.
One example he shared from Search Console was hit by the August 2026 spam update. During the September rollout its clicks went from close to zero to roughly 8,000 a day, and it started showing up in AI Overviews and AI Mode again.
Glenn's guess is that Google is updating its spam scoring. When a site is evaluated again and the result is positive, the score changes and the traffic returns. Edward compares it to a bug on your phone that gets fixed in the next system update. You cannot force the patch. You can only make sure your site is clean when it arrives.
→ If you were hit earlier this year and cleaned up, a spam update is when you find out whether it worked. Recovery arrives with the next evaluation, not the day you fix the pages.
Your rank tracker is probably wrong this week
There is a second problem on top of the update. Rank trackers are showing strange data. Charles Floate posted that the big SEO suites seem to be out of sync with the real results, with tracked first pages filling up with forum threads and YouTube videos. His theory is that Google is adding anti-scraping measures to protect its results and its AI answers.
Ahrefs has put up a notice saying Google changed how it serves results and that some of its SERP data may be inconsistent while the team works on it. Edward says he is seeing tracker data that is the opposite of what Search Console reports for the same sites.
So for the next few weeks, treat Search Console as the source of truth. If you want positions without a third-party scraper in the middle, we compared the options in four ways to check Google rankings programmatically, and the Search Console API is the first one.
→ Before you panic about a ranking drop, confirm it in Search Console. This week the tracker may be the thing that broke.
What to do while it rolls out
Edward's advice has three parts.
Wait. Do not make big changes while the update is still running. A long rollout probably means Google is tuning things with fresh behavior data, and a page that dropped on Tuesday can return on Friday.
Look at the pages that make you money. The pages that bring sales, signups or leads. Open each one as if you had just arrived from Google and ask whether it answers the search right away, above the fold. Try to be objective. It is hard with your own pages.
Remove what distracts from the action. Fewer competing buttons, less filler text, one clear next step. A page that is easier for the searcher is also a page that converts better.
Once Google marks the update complete, compare the two weeks before 24 September with the two weeks after the end date, page by page. If a group of pages dropped together and they share a template, you have your answer. Our SEO audit checklist with 42 checks in 6 parts is a good structure for that review.
→ During the rollout you observe. After it ends you compare and decide.
What I'm taking from Edward's breakdown
The target has not changed in a year. Pages that exist because someone multiplied a template. Edward says it has been the biggest focus of spam updates for the past year.
Updates give back as well as take. A site went from almost nothing to about 8,000 clicks a day because it was evaluated again. Cleanup work pays, with a delay.
Trust decides what Google tolerates. Reddit's translated threads win because people trust the source. That is a reason to build pages people would recognize as written for them.
Search Console first. When third-party data and Google's own data disagree, Google's data wins.
Patience is part of the method. Two weeks of rollout means two weeks without conclusions.
Watch the full episode
The episode runs about 16 minutes. Edward publishes one every day, and this is his second on the September update.
FAQ
When did the September 2026 spam update start?
It started on 24 September 2026 at 09:15 Pacific time, according to Google's Search Status Dashboard. It applies worldwide and in all languages. The first visible wave of ranking changes came on 25 to 27 September, and a second wave followed on 30 September.
How long does the September 2026 spam update take to roll out?
Google said the rollout may take up to two weeks. That is much longer than the other spam updates this year: March took one day, June two days and August two days. A longer rollout means sites can be affected on several different days before it is complete.
What kind of sites were hit by the spam update?
Mostly sites with highly templated pages, programmatic pages with little unique value, unreviewed AI content and doorway pages that swap a city or keyword and keep everything else the same. One reported example was a site with 143 templated service pages by county. Other sites are seeing smaller swings.
Can a site recover from a Google spam update?
Yes, and this update shows it. Glenn Gabe documented sites hit by earlier 2026 spam updates that surged during the September rollout, including one that went from nearly zero to roughly 8,000 clicks a day. Google says recovery can take many months, because it depends on the site being evaluated again.
Why is my rank tracker showing strange positions right now?
Because Google appears to have changed how it serves results to scrapers. Several SEO tools are reporting inconsistent SERP data, and Ahrefs has posted a notice about it. Until the tools adapt, use Google Search Console for clicks, impressions and average position, since it comes directly from Google.
Should I change my site during the rollout?
No, wait until Google marks the update complete. Positions are still moving, so a change you make now cannot be measured. Use the time to review the pages that bring you revenue and check whether each one answers the search immediately and has one clear call to action.
Check your money pages first
Open Search Console, note where your traffic stood on 24 September, and leave it alone until the update is done. If the review shows you need more pages that each answer one real question, and you do not have the time to write them, see how the Distribb AI content writer researches, writes and publishes them for you, and start the free trial.