A Google spam update just finished rolling out — check your rankings

Between August 18 and August 21, 2026, Google pushed a spam update that touched search rankings. Per Google's own status page, the rollout started at 09:27 US/Pacific on August 18 and finished at 01:49 US/Pacific on August 21, marked complete on August 21. The only product Google lists as affected is Ranking. That's the whole confirmed story — the source doesn't say what the update targets, who it rewards, or who it penalizes.

For an Alberta owner, the practical fact is the timing. Mountain time runs one hour ahead of US/Pacific during summer, so in local terms the rollout ran from roughly 10:27 AM MDT on August 18 to about 2:49 AM MDT on August 21. That's the window to draw your before-and-after line around.

Check whether it moved you

You can't undo a spam update, but you can find out in ten minutes whether it changed your traffic. Open Google Search Console for your property and compare the update window against a normal stretch before it.

1. Go to Search Console → Performance → Search results.
2. Set the date range to a custom window covering roughly Aug 4 to Aug 17 — your baseline two weeks.
3. Note your total clicks, impressions, and average position.
4. Change the range to Aug 21 onward — everything since the rollout completed.
5. Compare. A steady position and click count means you likely weren't affected. A clear drop that starts inside the window is your signal.

Read the shape, not one number

Use the Queries and Pages tabs to see whether a change is broad or narrow. Broad and narrow point to different problems.

Beyond confirming a change and where it landed, the source gives us nothing to act on. Google did not publish what this update looks for. So resist the urge to rip pages apart based on a guess.

A spam update is Google enforcing rules it already has — not a new checklist you can copy.

What to actually do this week

• Run the before-and-after comparison above and write down the numbers so you have a record.
• If nothing moved, you're done — log it and move on.
• If something dropped, read Google's spam policies for web search and check your site honestly against them: doorway pages, scraped or auto-generated filler, thin content, sneaky redirects.
• Open the source status page yourself for any detail we didn't cover — we're only repeating what Google confirmed.

The honest limit: if your rankings dropped and you genuinely can't spot a spam-policy violation, that's where DIY stops. Recoveries from spam updates are slow, they don't reverse instantly on the next update, and diagnosing a real cause takes someone who can audit the whole site against Google's policies. Confirming the drop is a job for this afternoon; fixing a real one is not.