September 2026 spam update: when and how to judge it

The September 2026 spam update ran from 24 September to 8 October, 13 days and 16 hours by the timestamps on Google's Search Status Dashboard. To judge it, compare 10 to 23 September against 9 to 22 October in Search Console, with the rollout days left out of both sides. The after window closes on 22 October, and Search Console marks its latest day or two as preliminary, so the read you can trust starts on 24 October.

Until then, a drop that began during the rollout is a suspect with a date on it. Use the days before the 24th to build the case.

Google's note said this one would be long

In August we wrote that spam update rollouts now finish in under three days. Three in a row had. September ran about five times as long as August's 2 days and 16 hours, so that headline is out of date.

The tell we pointed to in that post held up. On the morning it started, the September note said the rollout "may take up to two weeks to complete", where August's had said "a few days". Every rollout since December 2025 has finished inside the time its note gave:

• "A few days": the March spam update (19 hours 30 minutes), June (2 days 1 hour) and August (2 days 16 hours).
• "Up to two weeks": the March core update (12 days 4 hours), the May core update (11 days 21 hours) and the September spam update (13 days 16 hours).
• "Up to 3 weeks": the December 2025 core update (18 days 2 hours).

So plan from the wording, whatever the update is called. Our Google ranking updates page lists every confirmed rollout with its start and end dates, read straight from the dashboard.

The before and after windows for the September 2026 spam update

Search Console counts its days in Pacific Time, and the dashboard prints its times in US Pacific too, so the dates line up without conversion. Google released the update at 09:15 on 24 September and closed it in the early hours of 8 October. That gives you three ranges:

• Before: 10 to 23 September, the 14 days that end the day before the rollout opened.
• During: 24 September to 8 October. Keep it out of the comparison.
• After: 9 to 22 October, the 14 days that start the day after it closed.

In the Performance report, open the date filter, choose Compare and enter the before and after ranges as custom dates. Read clicks and impressions by page first, then by query. Fourteen days on each side gives you two full weeks, so the quiet weekends of a B2B site fall on both sides of the line.

What to check before 24 October

The slow work doesn't need the after window, so do it now:

• Date the drop. Switch Search Console to the daily view and write down the first day the line moved. If that day falls before 24 September or after 8 October, this update didn't start it.
• Rule out your own changes. List the deploys, template edits and redirect rules from the two weeks before that day. A drop that starts the day after a release is yours until shown otherwise, as we covered in how to tell if a Google update caused your ranking drop.
• Split by template. A spam update checks pages against named practices, and practices live in templates. Segment by directory and look for the one section that moved while the rest held still, the method from our August spam update walkthrough.

If the drop started inside the rollout and sits in one template, you have a suspect with a date and an address.

How to read the after window

On 24 October, run the comparison and match what you see to one of three shapes.

• One template down, the rest flat. The update most likely caught that template. Check it against Google's spam policies and fix the practice it matches, one page type at a time.
• The whole site down by a similar share. A spam update matches patterns page by page, so an even, site-wide drop points somewhere else. Look at the dates again, and at the movement Google never confirms, which we wrote about in most Google ranking updates go unannounced.
• Back to the before level. The dip happened during the rollout and didn't stick. There's nothing to fix.

For the next update, count from the note

The note's wording tells you the date you'll know. "A few days" plus a 14-day after window and a couple of preliminary days puts your answer under three weeks from the start. "Up to two weeks" puts it about a month out. Put that date in the calendar the morning the update starts, and keep shipping until then.

If you want help reading your Search Console data against an update and deciding what to fix first, that's the kind of work we do.