Google announced the Google September 2026 spam update a week ago today on September 24th. We most likely saw the first wave of sites getting hit on September 25th, 26th and into the 27th. Then things cooled a bit but it all heated back up yesterday, September 30th. September 30th may have been the second wave, the second phase of this Google spam update.
Google told us this spam update is different from the previous three spam updates in that the roll out will be around two weeks, versus the typical two day roll out. So we are expecting to see multiple cycles for this spam update where we see an impact on a day or two during the two weeks, and then another impact on a different set of days. We may see two or three or maybe even more days of impact throughout this spam update.
In summary, the Google September 2026 spam update was announced on Thursday the 24th; we saw the first days of impact on the 25th through 27th, and then now the second days of impact on September 30th and today, October 1st. Will we see more?
Glenn Gabe wrote on X this morning:
The update continues to roll out and I believe we saw a specific change on 9/30. I received emails from several site owners explaining they saw a huge drop right on 9/30... The update could take up to two weeks to fully roll out so it makes sense there would be various stages involved. Today's notes will be two separate tweets. First up, Reddit!Reddit AI translations return! I have heavily covered how Reddit's AI translations surged like mad for a long time in Google, but then came crashing down with the May 2026 core update and June 2026 spam update. Reddit's luck there finally ran out. But, it looks like those AI translations are surging back again with the September 2026 spam update. I checked across countries and I'm seeing those AI translations surge again in Italy, Germany, Brazil, France, and other countries.
So did Reddit complain enough to Google or is this just Google's systems rewarding those translations?? Again, Google said it's fine to translate via AI *IF* the content is high quality. Not sure on this one... Stay tuned.
Here are some of the charts he shared:
Good morning Google Land! This is the 10/1 edition of "Spam Update Notes". The update continues to roll out and I believe we saw a specific change on 9/30. I received emails from several site owners explaining they saw a huge drop right on 9/30... The update could take up to two… pic.twitter.com/Aw8ZqsyV5F
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 1, 2026
The comments on my last post have some chatter on the September 30th timeframe:
Semrush has changed direction since yesterday and is going back up. Had somewhat good conversions the last two days, but Semrush was dropping; early Christmas sales, I think.
Today something happened again. Traffic dead.
And WebmasterWorld got busy yesterday with chatter:
Discover and News traffic has again vanished.
Discover is currently extremely volatile. It’s doing pretty well for half the day, then suddenly it’s practically dead. Today is another one of those days where there is traffic, but very little of it. That said, that's normal with an update like this. It's just a bit annoying that my personal feed is full of spam.
Discover vanished.
I see two people wrote that Discover vanished today on Sept. 30. Do you have any explanation of what happened? Our Discover just vanished as well.
Google Tracking Tools
And here are what the tools are showing:
Google Volatility Chart
Wireboard - this report shows the aggregate of the tools above and plots them on one chart:
AWR:
What are you all seeing with the September 30th date?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
