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Google Search updates, tracked live
Every confirmed ranking update, Search Central announcement and documentation change in one place, pulled straight from Google's own sources and refreshed automatically.
September 2026 spam update
Started 24 September 2026. Released the September 2026 spam update , which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete.
Google's announcement · Avoid big site changes until it finishes, so you can tell what the update did.
typically up to 14
Ranking update history
| Update | Type | Started | Finished | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2026 spam update | Spam update | 24 Sep 2026 | Rolling out | Day 13 |
| August 2026 spam update | Spam update | 18 Aug 2026 | 21 Aug 2026 | 3 days |
| June 2026 spam update | Spam update | 24 Jun 2026 | 26 Jun 2026 | 3 days |
| May 2026 core update | Core update | 21 May 2026 | 2 Jun 2026 | 12 days |
| March 2026 core update | Core update | 27 Mar 2026 | 8 Apr 2026 | 13 days |
| March 2026 spam update | Spam update | 25 Mar 2026 | 25 Mar 2026 | 1 day |
| February 2026 Discover update | Discover update | 5 Feb 2026 | 27 Feb 2026 | 22 days |
| December 2025 core update | Core update | 11 Dec 2025 | 30 Dec 2025 | 19 days |
From the Search Central blog
- New learning paths: curated YouTube playlists for Search fundamentals and Technical SEO
Over the years, the Search Central YouTube channel has published hundreds of videos across various series, from Search for Beginners and Ask Googlebot to Search Console Training a…
- Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console
Understanding how users find your content is crucial for any publisher or site owner. As Search evolves to include more visual and multimodal experiences, we want to ensure you ha…
- Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026: Meet the community speakers
It's happening! We are absolutely pumped that we're just about two weeks away from Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026! From September 30 to October 2, 2026, the Google Sear…
- Search Central Live India 2026: Bengaluru, We're Coming (For Real This Time)
Remember back in March when we told our Indian community to "sit tight" while we figured out the APAC event calendar? Hopefully, you didn't take that too literally, because sittin…
- Search Central Live is coming to Bogota and Ciudad de México
Leer en español
- Update to the Site Reputation Policy
In 2024, we introduced our site reputation policy to stop a practice where third-party content is published on a trusted website just to exploit that site's good reputation to ran…
- Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance guide
Earlier this month, we announced platform properties for Search Console, allowing you to track how your social and video posts on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube perform on Goog…
- See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search
Content creators and publishers use many channels beyond their own websites to reach their audiences. As people gravitate toward firsthand perspectives and different content forma…
Search documentation changes
- Updated guidance on using generative AI content
What: Updated the using generative AI content guide with information from the Search Quality Raters guidelines. Why: To get our documentation in sync with our presentations we use…
- Added creator property and updated interactionStatistic in VideoObject structured data
What: Added the creator property (noting support for author) and updated interactionStatistic to document supported interaction types in the VideoObject structured data documentat…
- Added local business query support to the aggregator and supplier units
What: Updated the aggregator unit and supplier unit documentation to include support for local business queries. Why: The aggregator unit and supplier unit now support local busin…
- Added documentation on adding a Search profile badge to your website
What: Added a new guide on how to add a Search profile badge to your website. Why: To help site owners point their audience to their Search profile.
- Added documentation about regional differences in Search experience
What: Added documentation about regional differences in Search experience, which includes information about search experiences available in certain countries, such as aggregator u…
- Updated the European Search Dataset Licensing Program page
What: Updated the Google European Search Dataset Licensing Program page. Why: Refreshed the program overview, eligibility criteria, and application details.
- Updated the site reputation policy
What: Updated the site reputation policy. Why: We've adjusted our enforcement approach within the European Economic Area (EEA). For more information, see our blog post.
- Updated the favicon documentation
What: Updated the favicon documentation to specifically list out the supported favicon file formats. Why: To be clearer about which favicon file formats are supported by Google Se…
Crawling, indexing and serving issues
Outages Google confirmed on its side. If your traffic dipped on one of these dates, the cause may not be your site.
| Issue | Started | Status | Google's last note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serving was experiencing an issue | 25 Feb 2026 | Resolved | We fixed the issue with serving search results. There will be no more updates. |
| Serving is experiencing an ongoing issue | 4 Oct 2025 | Resolved | The issue with serving has resolved itself. There will be no more updates. |
About Google updates
What is a Google core update?
A core update is a broad change to how Google ranks results overall. It is not aimed at any one site or type of site. Google runs several a year, and rankings can shift in both directions while one rolls out.
How long does a Google update take to roll out?
Google usually says a rollout may take up to two weeks. Spam updates are often shorter. The table above shows the real start and finish date for each update, taken from Google's own Search Status Dashboard.
My traffic dropped during an update. What should I do?
Wait until the rollout is marked complete before judging the impact, then compare a full week after it ended with a full week before it started. If you lost ground, review your pages against Google's people-first content guidance rather than making quick technical changes.
Where does this data come from?
Directly from Google: the Google Search Status Dashboard for updates and incidents, the Google Search Central blog, and the Search Central documentation changelog. We check these automatically every 30 to 60 minutes.
Publishing during an update? Run your article through the pre-publish checker. It checks against Google's current content policies, so you fix problems before they cost you.
Sources: Google Search Status Dashboard, Google Search Central Blog, Search Central documentation updates. Dates are shown in Asia/Kolkata time. CheckArticle is not affiliated with Google.