Google Explains More Frequent Spam Updates as Content Volume Grows

At Google Search Central Live Deep Dive in Europe, Google explained why it is releasing spam updates more often in 2026: more new content is being published, and AI helps identify spam within it. Search Engine Roundtable reported this on October 5, citing John Campbell’s recap published on We Are Roast. For site owners, it matters both when planning content and when assessing changes in search traffic.

Why spam updates have become more frequent

According to Campbell’s recap, a significant share of content is spam, which is what Google’s updates target. The Search team uses AI to find more of it. That does not mean every piece of AI-generated text is automatically considered spam. The risk described is a flood of low-quality posts and the large-scale production of weak content.

Discover was also discussed: an influx of low-quality AI content is making the content in that feed worse. Campbell also reports that user feedback is important in developing new spam filters. That describes how the filters are developed; it is not a promise that a single piece of feedback will change the standing of a particular page.

Gary Illyes gave a figure: Google filters out 40 billion spam pages a day. Search Engine Roundtable notes that this figure had been published before. It should not, therefore, be treated as a new estimate of spam growth in 2026.

Campbell expects further spam updates and changes to the thresholds used to identify spam. The report gives neither dates for future updates nor details of those thresholds. It indicates the direction of the work, but offers no timetable for forecasting traffic.

Why quality assessment is changing too

The recap identifies three reasons Google keeps changing its approach to quality. Search is no longer limited to conventional links: different content formats require different ways of assessing them. The number of sites and pages has also grown. And the content problems that need to be detected are changing.

Examples of spam mentioned include cloaking, doorway pages, content scraped from other sites, link spam and hacked pages. According to Campbell, Illyes warned that mass-produced content is becoming a more serious problem than link spam. The report provides no numerical comparison between the two and describes no new penalties.

There is an important distinction with core updates: they assess content at the page level rather than passing a single verdict on a domain. Pages on the same site can therefore see their visibility move in different directions. When analysing traffic, it helps not to confuse that with the purpose of spam updates: detecting spam.

What site owners should check

If visibility has changed, start with individual pages: which gained visibility, which lost it, and what each one helps a visitor do. An overall traffic chart does not explain the cause of a change on its own. It helps identify pages to investigate, but it cannot replace a review of their content.

The quality discussion suggests assessing your main page types for the effort behind them, originality, author expertise and accuracy. Another question is whether a page offers anything useful beyond what visitors can find elsewhere. Aleyda Solis advises checking separately whether a template remains useful when applied at scale. This is not a ban on templates: what matters is the result on the published pages.

For marketers, this approach helps avoid reducing results to the number of posts published. For small site owners, it means checking whether the text answers customers’ questions and helps them choose a service. These are pointers for an audit, not a promise of higher rankings. The report gives neither a timeline for traffic recovery nor a guaranteed set of steps to take after an update.

My view: make the page useful before you scale

I wouldn’t try to explain every fluctuation in an overall chart before looking at individual pages. In a small business, it’s easy to spot content published to meet a quota: after reading it, customers still have to ask the same questions. My simple test is whether the page makes clear what the service is and what to do next.

I wouldn’t look for the answer in a platform switch, either. A CMS is still useful if it can be managed without unnecessary complexity. For a small business, being able to edit its own text matters more than a fashionable architecture. But even easy editing doesn’t remove the need to check what actually gets published.

Sources

Where the news comes from. The text is a retelling in the author’s own words; the facts come from the source, the opinion is the author’s.

1. Google Search Spam Updates Use AI To Find AI Spam & More www.seroundtable.com

About the author

Lauri Grön

owner of a small accounting practice

I run an accounting practice serving Russian-speaking clients, and need a website for services and inquiries. When reviewing the site, I checked not only the design but whether I could replace text myself without a twenty-page manual.

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