What the September 2026 Spam Update Means for Website Owners
For most legitimate website owners, an announced spam update is not a signal to immediately start rewriting the entire site.
It is a reason to pay attention.
Rankings can move during an update as Google’s systems reassess pages and search results. Some websites may gain visibility, some may lose it, and many may see little noticeable difference.
Because this rollout may take up to two weeks, day-to-day changes during that period do not necessarily tell you where a page will ultimately settle.
Watch Search Console Instead of Guessing
Google Search Console should be one of the first places you look.
Compare:
- Total search clicks
- Search impressions
- Average positions
- Individual page performance
- Queries that gained or lost visibility
Look for patterns rather than one isolated ranking.
If one article falls several positions for a day and then recovers, that may simply be normal volatility.
If a large group of related pages loses substantial visibility and remains down, that deserves closer investigation.
Do Not Assume Every Traffic Drop Is the Spam Update
Timing alone does not prove cause.
Search traffic can change because of:
- Seasonal demand
- Competitors publishing better content
- Search-result layout changes
- Technical problems
- Indexing issues
- Changes in search behavior
- Previous ranking changes finally becoming visible in your analytics
That is why comparing affected pages, queries, dates, and traffic sources is more useful than simply noticing that total visits went down.
A Spam Update Is Not the Same as a Manual Action
A ranking decline during a spam update does not automatically mean Google manually penalized your website.
Google uses automated spam-detection systems, while a manual action is a separate process involving human review.
Search Console has a Manual Actions report that tells site owners when Google has applied a manual action to a site.
If you see ranking changes but no manual action, that does not prove everything on the site is perfect—but it does mean you should not automatically describe the change as a manual Google penalty.
Does This Mean AI Content Is Being Targeted?
Not based on anything Google has announced about this update.
This distinction is especially important in 2026 because AI-assisted content is now common.
Google’s existing guidance says the use of AI or automation itself is not automatically spam. Google is concerned with content created primarily to manipulate rankings, particularly at scale without meaningful value for readers.
Its people-first content guidance recommends asking whether content offers original information, meaningful analysis, clear sourcing, a satisfying experience, and genuine value beyond simply summarizing what other websites already say. Google’s people-first content guidance
That means the safer question is not:
“Was AI used?”
It is:
“Does this page actually deserve to exist for the person reading it?”
AI can help research, organize, edit, summarize, brainstorm, or accelerate parts of a publishing workflow.
But publishing hundreds of barely differentiated pages because an AI system makes them cheap to produce can move into very different territory.
Google specifically lists generating many pages with generative AI without adding value for users as an example of scaled content abuse.
What About Affiliate Websites?
Affiliate publishers should pay attention to spam updates, but there is no reason to conclude that affiliate sites as a category are being targeted by the September update.
Google’s own spam documentation makes that distinction clear.
Affiliate links can appear on useful, high-quality pages.
The risk is when the affiliate page adds little beyond what already exists on the merchant’s website or elsewhere across the web.
For example, compare these two approaches.
Low-value approach:
Copy a product description, change a few sentences, insert an affiliate button, and publish.
Higher-value approach:
Explain who the product is for, who should avoid it, compare alternatives, test important features when practical, identify drawbacks, answer questions the merchant does not address, and clearly disclose the affiliate relationship.
The second page gives someone a reason to visit the publisher instead of going directly to the seller.
That additional value is increasingly important as search results themselves become more capable of answering simple informational queries.
