Google's spam update may run two weeks as Search Console adds image search data

At 9:15 a.m. Pacific on September 24, Google announced the September spam update on its Search Status Dashboard. It is global, covers all languages and, according to Google, may take up to two weeks to roll out. Matt Southern reports it in his weekly SEO Pulse roundup on Search Engine Journal, which also gathers two more stories worth reading alongside it.

The longest spam update of the year

It's the fourth spam update of 2026. The earlier ones, in March, June and August, were officially done within a few days. This window is several times wider, and the wording shows it: "up to two weeks". As usual, Google doesn't specify what the update targets.

In practice, ranking swings over these two weeks shouldn't be blamed on your own edits right away. If you recently changed templates or launched new sections, write down the date: once the update ends, it will be easier to separate its effect from yours.

Image searches arrive in Search Console

The Performance report now has a multimodal filter under the Web search type. It groups searches made through Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, uploaded images and Chrome's right-click search. It rolls out globally, and to the generative AI performance report too.

There is a notable limit: Google states that query data isn't available because multimodal searches mostly use images rather than text. You'll see impressions and clicks but not what the person photographed. For an online store that's already useful, since you can compare image-search traffic with ordinary results. How to build that into reporting is covered in our guide to GA4 reports for SEO.

What the traffic reports say

In the Chartbeat 2026 Publisher Playbook, Google Search traffic fell 40.2% over the year and Discover fell 34.3%. Chartbeat's network is mostly news sites, and Chartbeat sells analytics to publishers, so the number describes publishers and not necessarily online stores or service sites. Judging by the roundup, the report doesn't state how many sites it covers.

The second study comes from the University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University. It followed 1,100 US participants who searched as usual for three days and then used AI Mode for seven, all recorded by a browser extension. AI Mode users clicked through to websites 18.8 percentage points less often than people on regular Google Search. That is a difference in share, not a percentage of a percentage, and it was measured on Americans.

I'd trust your own data over either number. Compare Search and Discover in Search Console for the same periods and you'll see whether your site even resembles Chartbeat's publishers. For a Ukrainian business with local queries the picture may well differ, and website promotion usually depends on queries where AI Mode still appears rarely.

What I'll watch after October 8 is whether the ranking charts really settle within the two weeks Google promised.

Related reading: Google SpamBrain: How the Anti-Spam Algorithm Works · SEO site audit