Google's September 2026 Spam Update Is Rolling Out in Two Waves. That's Not a Glitch
Usually Google rolls out spam updates in waves a couple of days apart. It's practically a ritual by now — everyone's used to it. This time something's different. The first wave of the September 2026 spam update hit September 25–27. The second one doesn't start until September 30–October 1. That gap is bigger than usual, and the whole update will stretch across roughly two weeks, with multiple rounds of impact.
Why does this matter beyond being a technical detail? Because the traffic volatility is now spread out longer than you're used to. If your numbers dropped after the first wave, don't rush to conclusions — and definitely don't rush to fix anything drastically. The second wave might hit completely different pages, or it might partially bring your rankings back. Two days of panic just turned into two weeks of watching and waiting. Inconvenient, but that's how it is.
What the update actually targets
Spam updates always go after the same set of sins: thin pages with no real value, keyword cannibalization within a site, manipulated link profiles. If you've got pages that exist purely to grab a spot in search results — not to answer an actual user question — those are first in line to get hit.
One thing worth calling out specifically: Reddit and AI-translated content are climbing in the results again, and that's not a coincidence — it's a symptom. Google does allow machine-translated content, as long as the quality is genuinely high. But "allowed" and "recommended as your main method" are two very different things. Plenty of sites have spent years building out local versions purely on auto-translation, because it's cheap and fast. Cheap — yes. Reliable — no.
Why auto-translation is a patch, not a strategy
I've seen it over and over: sites scale into new regions through machine translation and stay afloat for years — right up until the algorithm decides it's time for a review. Auto-translation plugs a hole today. It doesn't build an asset that survives ten updates in a row. This matters even more for local site versions and multilingual content: Google can tell the difference between translated text and original content written for a specific region and a specific reader, even when the translation itself is technically decent.
Give the user real value in their own language first — the traffic follows. Same principle that runs through all of SEO, just wearing a different coat.
What to do right now
Check your site for spam red flags before the second wave reaches your pages: thin content, duplicate keyword targeting across sections, sketchy link schemes. It won't take long, and it could save you a lot of stress over the next two weeks.
If you've got regional site versions running on auto-translation, start planning to replace at least your key pages with original content. Not the whole site at once — that's not realistic. But the pages driving your main traffic and revenue need to be written for people, not pushed through a translator.
And above all — don't panic at the first swing in rankings. Whether this rollout is deliberately stretched or not, reacting in a jerky, reflexive way is the worst strategy you can run. Let the algorithm finish its job. Look at the two-week trend, not the daily wobble.
If you want an outside, honest look at where your site's real spam risks are — not guesswork — we can talk about it through our services.