Daily Marketing News, September 25, 2026: Google starts its September anti-spam search update
On September 24, 2026, Google started rolling out its 4th anti-spam update of the year, and for the next 2 weeks rankings in its results will jump around. Meanwhile, the head of Instagram explained how the feed works, LinkedIn calculated that a B2B buyer thinks for 124 days before the first call with a salesperson, and Google Ads changed the way it gives budget advice.
Story of the day: Google starts its September anti-spam update, rankings will shift for up to 2 weeks
On September 24, 2026, at 9:15 a.m. Pacific time, Google began rolling out the September 2026 spam update. This is an update to the anti-spam algorithm: sites that violate Google's spam policies drop in the results or disappear from them completely. The update is global and covers search in all languages, so sites in any language that get traffic from Google are affected. Search Engine Land and the Justia blog reported on it.
This is the 4th confirmed spam update of 2026. The previous one ran in August. Google allows up to 2 weeks for the rollout, although the 3 earlier spam updates this year finished faster. Google didn't say which scheme or which policy it's checking this time. It also didn't say whether it changed SpamBrain, its AI system for detecting spam. Guessing who's being targeted is pointless: the only guide is Google's general spam policies.
Rankings started moving before the announcement. Search Engine Roundtable recorded strong fluctuations on September 23 and 24, 2026, and believes a separate ranking update went through then, one Google never confirmed. That gives us 2 overlapping events: an unconfirmed one starting September 23 and the spam update starting on the 24th. If your traffic fell on September 23, that isn't necessarily a verdict from the anti-spam algorithm.
The most expensive mistake on days like these: seeing a drop and immediately starting to rebuild the site. While the rollout is running, the picture changes every day, and any edits get mixed up with the algorithm's movement. Afterwards you can't tell what worked and what didn't. The smarter move is to mark September 23 and 24 in your analytics, judge any drops only relative to those dates, and calmly check your site against Google's spam policies. If you find no violations, wait for the rollout to finish and look at the numbers after it.
More news, September 25, 2026
Demand Gen is a Google Ads campaign type that shows ads on YouTube, Shorts, Gmail and Discover. It isn't built to catch existing demand from search but to create new demand. Next to the product feed in video ads there's now an Ask YouTube assistant: viewers can ask about a product shown in the video without pausing it. Shorts and Gmail now support image ads that open with a single tap. Shorts requires a full-screen 9:16 image. According to Google, adding Gmail to Demand Gen delivers on average 40% more conversions from images at the same return on ad spend. Google Maps now has affiliate location extensions: an advertiser can show on the map the stores where its product is sold. Demand Gen didn't have this format before. The rollout starts this week, Social Media Today reports.
In his words, without an algorithm the feed would be filled by whoever posts the most, and brands post far more often than regular people and creators, so the average creator's reach would fall. Ranking is built on predicted reactions: will a person watch the post to the end, will they send it to a friend. Recency has a strong effect on distribution, so the feed runs roughly in order of posting time. The principles are: originality (priority goes to the creator of the content, not to whoever reposted it), recency, showing posts from small creators to people who don't follow them, and larger models. Mosseri advises creators to track engagement rate rather than views and likes, and to test new ideas with trial Reels, short videos that are shown to non-followers first. For accounts built on other people's reposts, this is a direct signal: those posts lose to the original.
Factors.ai analyzed more than 50,000 closed deals at 850 companies that sell to businesses. Reaching 6 or more people at the client's company before the deal even appears in the CRM, the customer relationship management system, raises the win rate by 17 percentage points. Adding 3 or more contacts during an active deal adds another 16 points. Meanwhile, 76% of LinkedIn ad budgets go to targeting directors, so nearly all the money goes to a single role, even though the winners are the ones who reach many people at a company. Companies that combine LinkedIn Ads with regular organic posts win deals 2.4 times more often than those who only pay for ads. LinkedIn recommends launching campaigns earlier, running them longer and broadening job title targeting.
Search Console is Google's free service for site owners, showing a site's impressions, clicks and rankings in search. The impressions and clicks report has a filter by search type: web results used to appear as a single "Web" line, and now there are 2 options inside it, "Text-based" and "Multimodal". Google gave no exact definition. Judging by the name, it splits text queries from queries involving an image, the camera or voice, Search Engine Roundtable reported. The filter is rolling out gradually and isn't available to everyone yet. For site owners, this is the first way to see traffic that doesn't come from typed text, for example for a store whose products people search for by photo. If you already have the filter, save the numbers from the first weeks as a baseline.
The first change is in the Recommended Investment Strategy tab on the recommendations page, where the system suggests how to split money between campaigns. Holistic mode shifts budget from weaker campaigns to the most successful ones, and the total stays the same. Growth mode gives the best campaigns new money without taking any from others, meaning it suggests you spend more. The second change is visible to some advertisers: a budget recommendation used to simply suggest changing a setting, and now it comes with a weekly conversion value forecast, a note that the campaign is limited by budget, and an apply button. Google sets the target in the forecast itself and then asks for money to hit it, Search Engine Roundtable reported. Before you click, check the advice against your actual return on ad spend.
Google Business Profile is a company's listing in Google Search and Google Maps, with its address, hours, reviews and photos. Hours used to be entered by hand, day by day, in a dedicated form. In the test, the owner describes in their own words when the business is open, and Google's AI turns the description into a structured format and shows it in the profile in Search and on Maps. The feature isn't available to everyone, and there's no date for a wide launch, Search Engine Roundtable reported. It's convenient but risky in the details: if your description includes holidays or breaks, check the profile through a customer's eyes after setting it up. A mistake in your hours means someone shows up to a locked door.
Local Services Ads are ads for local services, such as plumbers, electricians and lawyers, that appear above the regular results, and advertisers pay per customer lead rather than per click. In the test, ad images are larger, and a box listing key benefits appears below the ads. In Search Engine Roundtable's view, these ads stand out noticeably on the page. If the design launches for everyone, regular results and company profiles will end up even lower. Local businesses that advertise in this format or compete with it should prepare good photos in advance: whether a company gets noticed at all depends on them more and more.
AI Overviews is the AI generated answer that Google usually places above the regular search results. In the test, when a user opens a hotel's knowledge panel, the block with information about a specific hotel, the AI answer sits in the lower right instead of at the top. There's no timeline or launch conditions, and Search Engine Roundtable spotted the test. For hotels and booking sites, this is rare good news: if the AI answer stops taking over the top of the page, classic results and ads will be back on the first screen. Since it's only a test, it's too early to change your ads or site for it.
The Google Ads API is the programming interface that agencies, automation tools and reporting systems use to manage ad accounts without manual work in the interface. It's a minor release. It adds percentile metrics for competitive benchmarks, creating Performance Max drafts from Smart campaigns, URL settings for asset groups, and bid adjustment recommendations in search. Performance Max is Google's automated campaign type that distributes impressions across all Google properties on its own. For those who work through their own scripts and dashboards, the benchmarks are the main thing here: they can now be exported automatically, so you can compare yourself with competitors on a regular basis. For those who run ads by hand in the account, the release changes nothing.
What site owners, creators and advertisers should do about it
- Site owners: mark September 23, 2026 in your analytics as the start of ranking fluctuations and September 24 as the start of the Google spam update. For the next 2 weeks, judge any drops only with these dates in mind, check your site against Google's spam policies and don't rebuild it without a reason.
- Instagram creators: track engagement, not views, publish your own content instead of reposts and test new formats with trial Reels.
- B2B advertisers on LinkedIn: launch campaigns earlier, broaden targeting beyond directors and back your ads with regular organic posts.
- Google Ads advertisers: don't accept Growth mode or forecast based recommendations automatically, check them against your actual return on ad spend first. If you run Demand Gen, prepare full-screen 9:16 images for ads in Shorts.
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