Google Spam Update Rolls Out Globally with Longer Rollout Window
Google has rolled out its September 2026 spam update, which is expected to take up to two weeks to fully roll out. The update started on September 24 and applies globally to all languages, according to Google's Search Status Dashboard.
The rollout window for this update is longer than any of the previous three updates in 2026, with each of those taking no more than 2 days and 16 hours to complete. This means that the first few days of data may not accurately reflect the full impact of the update.
In related news, Google has added a multimodal filter to its Search Console's Performance report for searches where someone used an image. This filter covers various image-based search features such as Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, and Chrome's right-click 'Search this image' feature.
John Mueller of Google responded to a Reddit thread about a de-indexing case involving a casino site, suggesting that the issue may be related to an error page being crawled by Googlebot. He advised website owners to test their pages regularly to catch any issues before they become stable problems for search engines.