Daily Marketing News, September 29, 2026: Google spam update shook up search results
Google is rolling out its 4th spam update of 2026, and search results shook over the weekend: hardest on September 26, with more than a week of rollout still to go. Meanwhile, Google is testing a "Loading..." label under the AI answer and has removed the Follow button from desktop search results, and Telegram has hidden the @wallet crypto wallet from its menu.
Story of the day: the Google spam update moved rankings hardest on September 25 and 26
On September 28, 2026, Search Engine Roundtable reported that the September Google spam update noticeably shook up search results over the weekend. A spam update means Google is changing the automated systems that demote or remove sites that break its spam policies. The first wave arrived on Friday, September 25. On Saturday, September 26, rankings moved even more. On Sunday, September 27, the wave died down.
The wave ended, but the update didn't. It started on September 24 at 9:15 Pacific time and applies to all countries and all languages. Google gave the rollout 2 weeks, so roughly until October 8, and by the weekend only 5 days had passed. That means more waves are possible, and a site that got through Saturday calmly isn't safe yet.
The comparison with this year's earlier updates isn't pleasant. Google announced the March, June and August spam updates as "a few days," and none of them took longer than 2 days and 16 hours, which is 64 hours. This one has 336 hours set aside, more than 5 times as long. Google hasn't said what the update targets. A long rollout with no explanation usually means one thing: something bigger than the usual filter tweak is changing.
For anyone doing SEO, the takeaway is simple. If your Google traffic dropped or grew on September 25 and 26, the cause is almost certainly this update, not the season and not whatever you changed last week. Check the pages Google might see as spam: mass-generated text, bought links, other people's content on your domain.
Here's the order of steps. Open Search Console, go to the search performance report, and compare clicks and impressions for September 25, 26 and 27 with the week before September 24. Note which pages and queries dropped. Then comes the hardest part: don't rework anything in a panic until the rollout is over. In the first days the data doesn't show the full picture, and a fix made on September 29 can blend into the next wave so thoroughly that you'll never know what worked.
More news, September 29, 2026
AI Overviews is the block with an AI answer that Google shows above the regular links to websites. Before the test, this answer was collapsed by default, and the "Show more" button expanded it in full. The "Loading..." label gives the impression that the answer is still loading and nudges people to wait for the full text from the AI instead of scrolling down to the sites. For site owners this is a question of clicks: the longer someone reads the AI answer, the less often they reach the regular results. If clicks on informational queries are falling while your rankings stay the same, look at impressions and clicks for the same queries in Search Console, not just average position.
The Follow button in Google lets you follow a topic, a person or a site, after which Google shows new content from them more often in the Discover feed and in its apps. Previously the button appeared in both desktop and mobile results. Google hasn't said whether it's gone for good or only for some users. For publishers and blogs, this means people can now follow them in Google mostly from a phone. If you ask readers to follow your site in Google, aim that call to action at your mobile audience and show it in the mobile version of your site.
In Merchant Center, stores upload feeds, files listing their products, so those products appear in Google Shopping, Shopping ads and free listings. Late last week Google updated several Merchant Center policy documents and completely reworked the Merchant Center API help, the programmatic access to the dashboard for those who upload products automatically. Connecting third-party platforms, such as store builders, got its own tab in the Discover services section: the feature itself didn't change, it just has a dedicated place now. Stores with feeds should reread the policies now, before products start getting disapproved under the new wording, and anyone working through the API should check their integration against the new help docs.
An interface like this lets another company pull Google search results straight into its own product, bypassing the regular search page. About 2 weeks ago Google, apparently by accident, published the documentation for this API, and last week it took it down. Google has no public Web Search Service API, and nothing about it had been known outside the company before. Search Engine Roundtable suspects some partners, such as Apple, have access to it. For anyone doing SEO, the takeaway is this: Google results are shown not only on google.com but also inside other companies' products, like voice assistants, and your Google rankings bring in traffic from there too.
@wallet is a third-party bot that Telegram users use to store and send cryptocurrency. It used to have its own button in the app menu; now that button is gone, but the wallet itself still works and can be opened by searching for the bot's name. According to the outlet Runet, the Wallet wallet has been renamed Walt, and Telegram is preparing its own wallet, Gram Wallet. Channels and bots that accept crypto payments should update their instructions for subscribers today: "open the wallet from the menu" no longer works, and some people simply won't make it to the payment step.
What site owners, stores and channel owners should do about this
- Site owners: compare traffic and rankings in Google Search Console for September 25, 26 and 27 with the week before September 24, list the pages that dropped, and don't rework them until the spam update rollout ends, around October 8.
- Online stores with products in Google: reread the updated Merchant Center policies and open feed diagnostics so you catch disapproved products on day one, not after a week with no impressions.
- Telegram channels and bots that accept cryptocurrency: rewrite your payment instructions. The quick @wallet button in the menu is gone, so explain how to find the wallet through search.
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