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Google rankings down after the spam update: what to check before changing everything

Algorithm by Alessandro Mari · · 7 min read

If your site's traffic has moved in recent days, you are not alone. Google's September spam update finished on 8 October, and on 24 October industry trackers recorded another burst of volatility, this time unconfirmed. Before you touch the site, it helps to separate what actually happened from what is just noise.

What happened, with dates

According to Search Engine Roundtable, the September 2026 spam update began on Thursday 24 September and completed on 8 October, after roughly two weeks. Google had said it could take "up to two weeks", that it applied to all languages and locations, and called it a normal spam update. It did not say what share of searches was affected.

Trackers picked up three periods of movement: 25 to 27 September, 30 September, and 4 to 6 October. Note that this split into "waves" comes from tracker data and site-owner reports, not from Google.

Then, on 24 October, many monitoring tools showed strong volatility. The writer who reported it believes a ranking adjustment was probably released between Friday and Saturday, but that is his inference: Google has not confirmed anything. The same piece notes that third-party trackers had been unreliable for about a month, although many say they have fixed their problems. So even the volatility data deserves some caution.

What a spam update actually does

A spam update does not reward "better" content. It lowers or removes sites that break Google's spam policies. Google's documentation says so plainly: sites that violate the policies may rank lower or not appear in results at all. That means practices such as mass-produced content with no value, bought links, and pages built only to fool search engines.

If your site is clean, a drop at the same time almost always has another cause. If it has been hit, Google warns that recovery can take many months and that it will run periodic refreshes. There is no button to undo it within a week.

Check one: is the drop real?

Before concluding it is Google's doing, check with your own data, not a tracker's:

  • Search Console, Performance: compare at least 28 days with the previous 28, filtered by country. A fall in impressions means something different from a fall in clicks;
  • Seasonality: many businesses have predictable cycles. Compare with the same period last year, not only the previous month;
  • Pages, not the whole site: if you lose positions on 3 pages out of 200, it is a problem with those pages, not with the domain;
  • Broken tracking: an Analytics tag lost during a site update produces drops in visits that do not exist in the search results.

Check two: does the site follow the rules?

If the drop is real and lines up with the update dates, read Google's spam policies honestly, page by page, and ask whether anything on your site falls under them. The most common cases at small companies are not scams, they are shortcuts:

  • dozens of near-identical pages, for example one per city with the same text and only the city name changed;
  • articles mass-produced with AI and published with no review and no original input;
  • links bought from agencies or directories promising "guaranteed backlinks";
  • hidden text or text stuffed with keywords.

If you find something like this, the fix is to remove or rewrite, not to add more. After that, patience: the timing is Google's, not yours.

What not to do

The 24 October movement is not a confirmed event. Rewriting the site, changing consultant or buying more links a few days after a wobble is the fastest way to add problems to a drop that may already have reversed. Wait for a few weeks of clean data before deciding, and change one thing at a time, noting the date. Otherwise, in a month, you will not know what worked.

One more thing: AI clicks remain invisible

There is a second possible cause of lost visits that no tool shows you properly. On 15 October Google changed how links appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, with more links in the answers and some placed prominently at the top, but it did not introduce click data. Asked by Search Engine Roundtable, it replied that it is working with site owners to understand which insights would be most useful and will add more metrics over time. As reported, Search Console's AI report currently shows impressions but not clicks or click-through rate. If your visits fall while impressions do not, that may be the reason, but for now there is no way to prove it.

What to do this week

  1. Compare Search Console over 28 days, by country and by page;
  2. If the drop is concentrated on a few pages, start there;
  3. Run our free SEO analysis tool to rule out obvious technical errors;
  4. Re-read Google's spam policies and compare them with your content;
  5. If nothing changes, do nothing for two weeks and measure again.

If you would like a second reading of your numbers, the free SEO analysis is a sensible starting point; for structured help, see our SEO services, or get in touch.

Sources: Search Engine Roundtable (spam update completion, 8 October 2026; 24 October volatility, published 25 October; link changes in AI Mode and AI Overviews, 15 October 2026).