Google has rolled out its fourth spam update of 2026, called the September 2026 Spam Update, just over a month after the previous one. The update was announced on social media platforms like X and LinkedIn by Google Search Central. It was deployed on the Search Status Dashboard at 9:15 Pacific Time, which is 18:15 in Paris. The update applies to all languages and geographic regions. According to the Google Search Central LinkedIn account, it is a normal spam update, and its full effects may take up to two weeks to be fully realized. Google primarily uses automated systems to detect and combat spam, only making public announcements when there are significant improvements to these systems. One such system is SpamBrain, an artificial intelligence tool that identifies known spam patterns while continuously learning to detect new forms of spam. This update does not include any new specific anti-spam rules, but it continues the company's efforts to refine its spam detection capabilities. Websites that violate Google’s spam policies are at risk of being affected by this update. These policies prohibit practices such as mass publishing low-value content, buying or exchanging links to artificially boost a site's popularity, cloaking (showing different content to search engines than to users), satellite pages (duplicate content pages), keyword stuffing (overloading content with keywords), and repurchasing expired domains to gain from their previous authority. If a site is penalized, it may experience a drop in search rankings or even be removed from search results. Once penalized, the ranking loss is not recoverable immediately, as Google warns that any previous ranking benefit from spammy links is lost. Additionally, returning to compliant practices does not guarantee a quick recovery, as the system may take several months to recognize improvements. During the deployment period, Google advises against drawing premature conclusions based on data from a single day. Instead, website owners should monitor their rankings using the Search Console and wait until the update is fully deployed, as indicated by the closure of the incident on the Search Status Dashboard, before making changes to their site. 2026 has seen an unusually high number of updates from Google. The September update comes just 37 days after the August 2026 Spam Update, a much shorter interval than typical for such updates. In 2025, Google only deployed one spam update, in August. So far in 2026, four spam updates have been released, following those in March, June, and August. Additional updates include the Discover-specific Core Update in February and core updates in March and May. The previous three spam updates were completed in under three days, but this one may take longer. It is also possible that the update affects AI Overviews and AI Mode, features recently deployed in France at the end of July. SEO monitoring tools can help track changes in rankings until the update is fully deployed.