Google’s most recent spam update began on 18 August and finished on 21 August, taking two days and 16 hours in total to complete. This is Google’s third confirmed spam update of 2026, after its rollouts in March and June. The latest update was global and rolled out to all languages. According to reports, this spam update has caused significant ranking volatility across a variety of industries. If you’ve noticed changes in your rankings or traffic, the August spam update could be responsible.
Policy-Violating Spam Practices
Google’s automated systems are constantly working to identify what it considers spam and prevent websites from manipulating both traditional search results and AI experiences. Occasionally, Google makes significant improvements to these systems, and when it does, it announces a spam update. The August update hasn’t been accompanied by new spam policies or a separate blog post, so Google’s existing documentation remains the key reference point for site owners. Some of the points covered in its policies include:
- Scaled content abuse – Producing large volumes of unoriginal or low-value content without human review or added value
- Cloaking – Showing one version of a page to users and a different version to search engines
- Doorway pages – Creating multiple low-value pages that funnel users to the same destination
- Keyword stuffing – Overloading pages with keywords with the sole purpose of manipulating rankings
- Scraped content – Taking text, images or feeds from other sites using automated tools and publishing them on your own site without adding any original value
- Hacked content – Injecting hidden text, code, spam or hidden links into website content that are placed without the site owner’s permission.
Another important point to note is that Google’s spam policies now also cover attempts to manipulate its AI search experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews. Some of these manipulative tactics include hiding keyword-stuffed text, invisible text manipulation, unnatural authoritative declarations and abusive scraping with the intention to intercept LLM scrapers and force false citations. It made these policies explicit in its documentation after the June 2026 spam update.
How This Spam Update Has Affected Rankings
The SEO tool SE Ranking analysed US organic Google search results for 100,000 keywords across 20 industries and compared rankings from 17 August and 22 August, so both right before and immediately after the spam update. It used 26 July to 31 July as a baseline, when no spam update was taking place. The report found that the spam update has had some widespread impact on rankings, with over 80% of the top 10 URLs dropping below the 100th position.
- During the update, almost 17% of URLs that ranked in the top 10 disappeared beyond position 100 for the same keyword
- Since the end of the update, 12% of URLs that were previously never in the top 20 have started ranking in the top three positions
- The top three position volatility affected around 63% of URLs, compared to the 51.34% baseline
- The top 10 rankings volatility affected specific industries such as real estate, fashion and beauty, healthcare, and ecommerce and retail.
The impact of this rankings volatility is significant. Dropping out of Google’s top 10 search results and falling below position 100 is a big problem for search visibility, one that’s hard to recover from. It shows that the August 2026 spam update had far more of an impact compared with typical search volatility. It’s worth noting that there’s no explanation from Google or SE Ranking as to why those URLs have dropped off or what affected their rankings.
What This Update Means for Search Visibility
Although this particular spam update has impacted a large number of websites, it’s normal for rankings and traffic to fluctuate after a spam update. We use the weeks before 18 August as a baseline and have since been comparing performance from 21 August. This gives us a more accurate overview of what’s changed now that the update has settled. If your rankings and traffic have changed significantly since the spam update rollout, that doesn’t necessarily mean your website has received a Google penalty, but it does make it worth auditing for spam policy compliance.
What to Do if Your Traffic and Rankings Drop After a Spam Update
If your organic performance has declined, we recommend taking a measured approach rather than immediately overhauling large parts of your website.
- Check and verify – Check Google Search Console for any manual action messages. Then compare the date of your traffic decline with Google’s Search Status Dashboard to establish whether it coincides with the spam update
- Audit your content – Identify thin, duplicate, or low-value pages that aren’t providing anything useful to users. Depending on what you find, these may need to be improved, consolidated, removed, or noindexed
- Strengthen Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) – Make your expertise more visible in your content through genuine experience, original research, clear author information or credentials, and accurate claims
- Review your links – Check for unnatural inbound or outbound links that exist solely to manipulate rankings
- Monitor content clusters – Track your performance by content clusters or groups rather than only looking at site-wide traffic. This makes it easier to identify which areas of your site have been affected by the spam update and whether the changes you’re making are helping.
Most importantly, don’t rush to make huge changes all at once. If you alter everything on your website simultaneously, you won’t know which actions made a difference to your search visibility. If your site has been affected by a spam update, recovery isn’t immediate. Google says its automated systems need time to recognise that a website has made changes and is now complying with its spam policies. In some cases, this can take months. Be prepared to wait a while before making more changes to see if your visibility improves.
The Final Word
Now that the rollout is complete, if you’re experiencing site-wide volatility, an E-E-A-T audit is your best bet to establish why your rankings might have dropped and how to move forward with a clear recovery plan. The audit evaluates your website’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – the four pillars Google uses to assess content quality. An audit can help identify gaps where your content might be falling short of the standards expected for high-intent search results (e.g., lack of author bios to signal expertise). It also provides a prioritised roadmap of targeted optimisations to recover search visibility over time. Reach out to the Herdl team to chat about your search rankings and an E-E-A-T audit.