On October 8, Google completed the rollout of its September update to spam-fighting algorithms. The update primarily affects website owners, SEO specialists and moneymakers who work with organic Google search traffic across all regions and languages.
For those who buy only paid traffic through search or targeted advertising, search results remain unchanged. Therefore, the launch of these algorithms does not directly affect their work.
Rollout timeline and differences from previous updates
The update rollout began on September 24 and took almost two full weeks — 13 days and 16 hours. This is the longest search engine spam update of 2026.
For comparison, Google completed the March update in less than a day, while the updates in June and August took about two days each. At the same time, the platform did not reveal which specific types of spam were targeted by the filters this time or why the rollout took so long.
In other words, the algorithms responsible for cleaning up search results were being adjusted for longer than usual, leading to significant ranking fluctuations throughout the update period.
Analytics service issues and traffic drops
Initial measurements from third-party analytics services showed a decline in the share of free organic search traffic for one-third of the websites being monitored. Around 10% of websites lost half or more of their search traffic in the first few days after the update began.
At the same time, many third-party rank trackers began showing sharp increases and drops starting September 26 that real users did not notice in regular search results. The services attribute this to Google returning incomplete or corrupted results to automated checkers during the update.
Therefore, traffic drops should be evaluated not by graphs from third-party software, but by impressions and clicks in Google Search Console for the period from September 24 to October 8.
Who the update will affect
The changes primarily affect doorway site networks, websites with machine-generated content and projects using aggressive link schemes. If rankings have dropped and the decline continues for several consecutive days in Search Console, the website has been hit by the search engine's automated penalties.
For affiliate marketers and teams working with search traffic, this means they need to recheck all their active website networks. You should not expect a quick recovery: according to Google's rules, even after a website has been completely cleaned of violations, the algorithms may take several months to reassess it.
