Google has confirmed its search spam team is still well resourced in its fight against search spam and continues to update its spam algorithms. Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, gave that confirmation after the August 2026 spam update removed URLs at a sharper rate than recent spam updates. For an agency looking after client sites, a spam update is worth a close look.
What did Google confirm?
Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, confirmed that the search team remains well resourced in its fight against spam and continues to update its spam algorithms. He said so in a brief reply on X after an SEO observer questioned whether the spam team was still fully staffed, given Google’s wider push into its Gemini AI work. The observer’s post argued that before the August update, some scaled content such as scaled listicles had been ranking without those domains being hit at scale. Patel’s reply was short: "Yes it is." Search Engine Roundtable documented the exchange on August 31, 2026.
How harsh was the August 2026 spam update?
SE Ranking’s data showed the August 2026 spam update hit harder than most recent spam updates. The figure SE Ranking highlighted was an 82% increase in the number of URLs Google kicked out of the top 100 results, which the firm tied to this being a spam update rather than a core update. Search Engine Journal’s algorithm history records that Google launched the August 2026 spam update on August 18 and completed it on August 21, with the rollout affecting search results globally. A September 2026 spam update followed on September 24, and a June 2026 spam update ran from June 24 to 26, a cadence that lines up with an active spam team shipping updates through the year.
Which sites took the biggest hits?
The documented drops pointed at scaled, programmatic content. An independent SEO observer recorded a site that fell hard during the August spam update after being scaled to roughly 1.3 million URLs and looking heavily programmatic. The same observer flagged another site with close to 250,000 URLs indexed that also dropped during the update window.
What an agency checks for clients when a spam update lands
Spam updates lead agencies that manage client sites to work through a checklist:
- Where traffic and rankings moved in the days around the rollout, lined up against the published start and end dates.
- Whether any drop looks sudden rather than gradual.
- Whether affected pages answer a real question for a reader or exist mainly to rank.
Comparing rankings against the rollout dates is the job of a rank tracker, and SEOScanPro‘s rank tracker can check as often as every five minutes, which makes it easier to see whether a drop lines up with an update.
What to do now
- Ask your agency whether any of your pages are produced from templates at scale, and which ones.
- Compare your traffic and rankings against the August 2026 spam update window, August 18 to 21, to see whether any drop lines up with it.
- Review flagged pages against one test: does the page answer a real question, or does it exist to rank.
- For pages that only exist to rank, decide whether to rewrite them into something a reader would use or remove them.
- Keep watching, since Google shipped spam updates in June, August and September of 2026.
FAQ
Did Google confirm the spam team is still active?
Yes. Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, confirmed in a reply on X that the search team remains well resourced and keeps writing new algorithms to fight spam.
How harsh was the August 2026 Google spam update?
SE Ranking reported an 82% increase in URLs Google removed from the top 100 results, which it tied to this being a spam update rather than a core update. Search Engine Journal’s algorithm history records that the update ran from August 18 to August 21, 2026, and affected search results globally.
What kind of sites were hit hardest by the August 2026 spam update?
Documented cases pointed at heavily programmatic, scaled content. One flagged site had around 1.3 million URLs indexed and another close to 250,000, both dropping during the update window.
Related coverage
- Google AI Search Box, Local Sponsorships and Review ROI in 2026 - NewSunSEO
- Search Everywhere Optimization: Why Google Alone Isn’t Enough in 2026 - NewSunSEO
- Google’s New AI Search Guidance: Why Non-Commodity Content Is the Only Strategy That Matters - NewSunSEO
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