Google's 2026 spam updates: what a small business site should actually check

Google confirmed three spam updates so far in 2026: one starting March 24, one on June 24, and one on August 18. Every time one rolls out, business owners email me the same question: "Is my site going to get hit?"

For almost every honest local business, the answer is no. But it's worth knowing what Google is actually going after, because a few common "SEO tricks" sit right on the line.

What a spam update is (and isn't)

A spam update is Google tightening the systems that enforce its spam policies. It's not a general ranking shake-up, and Google didn't name a new target for the August rollout. The policies themselves cover things like:

• Scaled content abuse: lots of pages made mainly to rank, whether written by people, AI or both.
• Site reputation abuse: renting out part of a trusted site to publish unrelated content.
• Link spam: buying links, link swaps, and links built only to pass ranking value.
• Doorway pages: near-identical pages for every town that all funnel to the same place.
• Expired domain abuse, cloaking, hidden text and keyword stuffing.

One thing that keeps getting misreported: using AI to help write content is not against the rules on its own. Google's focus is whether the content is made for people and adds something. A hundred thin AI pages is a problem. One well-checked article that happens to be drafted with AI is not.

A 15-minute check for your site

Open your site and Google Search Console side by side and go through this:

1. Town pages. If you have a page for every town you serve, do they say something different? Real details (directions, local projects, photos) are fine. The same paragraph with the town name swapped is a doorway pattern.
2. Blog posts. Would you be happy if a customer read every one? Delete or merge posts that exist only to repeat a keyword.
3. Links you paid for. If someone sold you "100 backlinks", those are the links this policy is about. Stop the service.
4. Footer links. A line of keyword links in your footer, or your web designer's keyword-stuffed credit, isn't helping anyone.
5. Search Console. Look at the Performance report for the update dates. A sharp drop that starts on one of them and stays down for weeks is the signal to dig deeper. A few days of wobble during the rollout usually isn't.

The boring truth

Every spam update so far has rewarded the same thing: a site that answers real questions from real customers, and earns links because people actually find it useful. That's slower than any trick, and it's the only approach I've seen survive every update.

Sources: Google Search Central spam policies; dates from Google's Search Status Dashboard as reported by TechWyse.