Google's John Mueller reiterated what Google has said numerous times already, that Google does not wait to announce the update. When Google begins rolling out the search update, whether a core or spam update, it will announce it shortly after it starts. Google does not wait a day or two to announce the update is rolling out.
So while we may have seen a lot of volatility prior to the most recent update, the Google August 2026 spam update - that volatility was not related to this spam update.
I cannot tell you how many times we report on Google updates here and then Google announces an update a day later. Google has always told me, what I saw the day before was unrelated to the announcement. Yes, Google does smaller core updates without announcing them all the time. But Google has always told me, the unnannounced update we saw a day or two before Google annnounced an official update is not related to the official update, and it is something else.
John Mueller reiterated that this morning on LinkedIn when he was asked:
I noticed in Search Console that they seem to start rolling out updates around 3–5 days before announcing them.
John Mueller replied:
We don't roll them out beforehand. We try to get the announcement as close as possible to the actual "button-pushing" (which is sometimes challenging due to time-zones).
Years ago, Google did promise to pre-announce updates - that never happened because it's not possible. But Google does not wait 3-5 days to announce an update has rolled out. To be fair, Google did once forget to announce a big update and told us later but that is super rare.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
