Google said the spam update that began on September 24 finished rolling out on October 8. Search Engine Roundtable reports it took about two weeks, versus about two days for recent updates.
What was announced
According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google said through the official Google Search Central account that the September 2026 spam update finished rolling out on October 8, 2026, at 4:37 a.m. Eastern Time. The rollout had started on September 24.
The same report says the update applies to all languages worldwide. Google says it will not share the percentage of searches affected.
Background and context
The report notes that recent spam updates finished in about two days, while this one took about two weeks. It lists September 25-27, September 30, and October 4-6 as days when effects were most noticeable. That is the author's own observation, and it assumes no other updates overlapped.
Spam updates are meant to lower the ranking of, or stop showing, sites that go against Google's spam policies. According to the report, no policy change was announced this time, and link spam is not the target. It also relays Google's explanation that sites that lost rankings can take months to recover.
We covered the in-progress stage of this update in an earlier article dated October 4. This article is the follow-up on its completion.
TAKEAWAY
What this means for your project
Now that the rollout is over, compare Search Console clicks and impressions around September 24 with those after October 8, and look for pages that dropped sharply. If any did, check them against Google's spam policies: mass-produced thin pages, copied text, unreviewed AI content. If nothing changed, no action is needed; otherwise fix problem pages individually, not the whole site.