September 2026 Spam Update Is Complete After 13 Days, 16 Hours

Google has marked the September 2026 spam update as complete. According to the Search Status Dashboard, "The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026." It began on September 24 at 16:15 UTC, and the dashboard records the end at 08:00 UTC on October 8, which makes the rollout 13 days, 15 hours and 45 minutes long.

We covered the start of the rollout in September 2026 Spam Update Begins Rolling Out, With a Two-Week Window. This post closes that out, puts the final duration in context and sets out how to read your own data now that the rollout is finished.

What Google has confirmed

The dashboard entry has just two updates:

• 24 September, 16:15 UTC: "Released the September 2026 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete."
• 8 October: "The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026."

That is all Google has published. There is no Search Central blog post about the update, and Google has not said what kinds of spam it targeted. Reports of a "second" or "third phase" during the rollout circulated in the SEO community, but the dashboard never described the update in phases, so treat those as unconfirmed observations of ranking movement rather than anything Google announced.

How it compares with 2026's other spam updates

Update	Google's estimate	Actual duration
March 2026 spam update	a few days	19 hours, 30 minutes
June 2026 spam update	a few days	2 days, 1 hour
August 2026 spam update	a few days	2 days, 16 hours
September 2026 spam update	up to two weeks	13 days, 16 hours

The September update used almost the whole window Google gave it, which is unusual. The three earlier 2026 spam updates each finished well within their "few days" estimate. This one ran roughly five times longer than any of them, and came just 37 days after the August update began.

It isn't a record, though. The August 2025 spam update ran 26 days and 15 hours, and the October 2023 spam update ran 15 days and 12 hours. Our Google updates timeline has the full history from Google's dashboard.

Reading your data now the rollout is over

Google's core updates guidance suggests waiting at least a full week after an update completes, then comparing that week with a week before it started. The spam updates page gives no equivalent timing, but the same logic applies. Search Console data from 24 September to 8 October is a mix of before and after.

1. Compare clean periods. Use 15 to 21 October against 10 to 16 September. Both are full weeks outside the rollout and avoid partial days.
2. Mind the time zone. Search Console dates are in Pacific Time. The rollout started at 16:15 UTC, which was 09:15 Pacific on 24 September, so that day is partly affected.
3. Check the Manual actions report first. A spam update is algorithmic, but a manual action shows up in Search Console directly. Rule it out before you diagnose anything else.
4. Segment the drop. Compare by page, directory and query rather than at site level. A spam-related drop usually sits in specific sections, templates or link-dependent pages.
5. Look at your link-dependent pages. Google's documentation says that for updates dealing with link spam, improvements "might not generate an improvement" because the benefit of spammy links is lost rather than suspended. Google hasn't said this was a link spam update, but pages that relied heavily on paid or exchanged links are worth checking.

If you were affected

Google's guidance after a spam update is to "review our spam policies" and make sure your site complies. The spam policies cover practices including scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse, expired domain abuse, link spam and thin affiliation. Recovery is slow by design. Google says changes may help a site improve "if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies".

Two things not to do:

• Don't disavow in a panic. Google ignores most spammy links automatically. A disavow file is for links you built or bought, not every low-quality domain in a backlink tool.
• Don't delete content without a diagnosis. Removing pages because a third-party tool shows lost keywords can cut useful pages along with weak ones. Start from the sections that actually lost clicks.

If you're not sure whether a drop came from this update, a technical problem or seasonality, our technical SEO audits start by separating those causes.

Sources

• Google Search Status Dashboard: Ranking history
• Google Search Central: Google Search spam updates and your site
• Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search
• Google Search Central: Google Search's core updates and your website