The spam update is over, so rankings should settle
Google's long spam update is done, and attention is already turning to the next core update.
Google's September 2026 spam update is finished. Google Search Central posted that "The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026." That closes out a ranking change Google first announced in September, and it means any traffic swing caused by it should now stop.
The rollout was complete as of October 8, 2026.
A spam update is a change to how Google ranks sites, aimed at pages that break its spam rules. This one ran for weeks. Barry Schwartz called it "The long Google September 2026 spam update" when he noted it was done, and we covered the confirmation earlier.
What is new
Attention has moved on. Schwartz is now asking site owners two things, how the spam update treated them, and when they expect the next core update to hit. A core update is a broader, regular change to how Google ranks everything, not just spam. Nobody has said when the next one is coming, and Google has not announced one.
What this means for your site
If your traffic moved up or down during the rollout, the update is no longer the moving part. Ranking shifts from here are more likely to be normal week to week noise, or something else entirely.
So do not react to a single bad day. Open Google Search Console, click Performance, set the date range to the last three months, and look at where the line actually changed. If the drop started in late September or early October and has flattened out since October 8, that is the spam update and it has run its course.
If you did lose traffic, the question is whether anything on your site looks like what spam updates target. That means pages built from a template with one word swapped, bulk pages that do not answer the question they are built around, and thin pages published at volume. Being hit is not a hand-issued penalty, there is no message in Search Console and no appeal. The fix is removing or rewriting the weak pages and waiting for Google to re-crawl them.
If your traffic did not move, there is nothing to do. Most sites are not affected by a spam update, and the right response to a quiet chart is to keep going.
One more thing worth holding onto. Google does not re-run a finished update on request, so there is no point refreshing your rankings daily hoping for a bounce. Make the changes, then check again in a few weeks.
How did the Google spam update treat you? And when are you expecting the next core update to hit?
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.