Google releases August 2026 spam update

By Barry Schwartz

Published: August 18, 2026 at 12:37 pm

Google has released the August 2026 spam update and said this update will take a few days to roll out. This update applies globally and to all languages, Google added.

More details. Google posted about the update on its incident dashboard and wrote:

Released the August 2026 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take a few days to complete.

You can learn more about Google spam updates in this Google help document.

Why we care. This is the third Google spam update announced in 2026, the last one was the June 2026 spam update. If your site was not impacted, then you are good to go – at least for now.

There will always be cases of sites not spamming Google that get hit by a spam update but hopefully that won’t be one of your sites.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.