As Google continues its efforts to deliver most relevant results to searchers Google has launched the Google August 2025 Spam Update. The update will be global, affect all languages and all regions and is said to have started to roll out at 9:00 AM Pacific Time today, August 26, 2025. The update is expected to take several weeks to complete and as usual for such updates the rollout will be gradual and Google’s systems will be assessing pages around the web.

It will take several weeks to release the update completely to Search. In the meantime, sites will see themselves move up or down for specific queries, and in some cases see increase or decrease in search traffic. As has been the case before, Google is looking at groups of pages (some of them single pages) to evaluate them.

What Is the August 2025 Spam Update?

Google’s ongoing efforts to provide users with higher quality search results with more relevant, more trustworthy and better quality results, also means Google is constantly fighting spam in search. Most updates Google releases are broad updates that assess all of the quality signals on a page. A spam update on the other hand is much more targeted and is released to fight particular types of spam or certain behaviors that violate Google’s Search spam policies. Unlike a core update, where a site can see broad fluctuations in rankings as Google assesses the quality on the site, a spam update affects only the specific spam tactics or behaviors on a site that are in violation of Google’s Search spam policies.

Google has confirmed that the update will be a global update affecting all languages and will be rolling out over the next few weeks. However, they have yet to confirm what behaviors or types of spam the update will be targeting. Google’s approach to previous spam updates has been to release the update and provide limited information on what the update is targeting while it is rolling out. Instead they tend to provide more information on what the update was targeting after the update has completed.

Google’s official announcement states:

“Released the August 2025 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take a few weeks to complete.”

What Can You Expect During the Rollout?

Rankings and organic traffic from search temporarily fluctuate for individual sites or individual pages as part of the update’s rollout.

These changes may include:

• Increased or decreased keyword rankings
• Fluctuations in organic search traffic
• Changes in impressions and click-through rates
• Instead, you will likely see the ranking of a group of related pages (not individual URLs) moving as a unit up or down.

Because the update takes place over weeks and impacts several systems within Google, the rankings on your site will likely fluctuate until the update is complete. These fluctuations are not limited to an increase or decrease in ranking for certain keywords. Your impressions, click-through rates and other SEO metrics will also likely change during this time. Furthermore, you will likely see changes in your rankings in relation to groups of pages on your site as opposed to individual URLs.

Temporary ranking fluctuations occur as Google’s update goes through a roll out across all search systems over several weeks. During this time SEO changes are best avoided as rankings could change many times until update is complete. However obvious technical issues on a website should be addressed as quickly as possible.

How Should Website Owners Respond?

Since Google didn’t explicitly state what to do in order to receive positive signals from this update, the best course of action is to adhere to the Search Essentials and spam policies that Google has established.

Do not try to fix or manipulate your site to take advantage of whatever Google is targeting as this is unknown at present. Instead simply monitor your site for trends in your standard SEO metrics (organically seen pages, impressions, clicks, etc) for as long as possible after the update. As above, monitor your Google Search Console to see individual pages gaining or losing visibility over time. It may be useful to add an annotation to the date of the update (in my case 26th August) to allow for better understanding of trends over time.

Key areas to watch include:

• Monitor Google Search Console

Track important metrics such as:

• Organic impressions
• Total clicks
• Average keyword positions
• Pages gaining or losing visibility

Add an annotation for the August 26 rollout date to be able to compare the performance of your website and your reports before and after the update in your reports over time.

Analyze Page and Query Trends

Rather than examining the ranking of a single keyword on a single page, analyze broader trends of Page and Query Trends.

For example:

• Are product pages moving together?
• Are blog articles experiencing similar changes?
• Are branded searches stable, while informational searches are volatile?

A single up- or down-ranking for a certain keyword on a certain page is usually not the most valuable piece of information. Instead, analyzing Page and Query Trends in the tool helps to better understand the broader trends.

Compare Against Competitors

Changes in ranking during a spam update can affect an entire industry.

Compare your website’s ranking volatility to that of your competitors. This will give you a better idea of whether your website’s ranking changes are an isolated incident or part of the wider search environment.
The Latest Spam Updates are Part of Google’s Search Improvements.

These updates are included in Google’s releases of spam updates several times a year to keep fine-tuning search quality.

These updates work alongside:

• Core Updates
• Helpful Content improvements
• SpamBrain AI enhancements
• Other ranking system refinements

These changes will look to give more value and rankings to “helpful content” (as discussed in last month’s helpful content update) and work to identify low-quality, manipulative or deceptive content and sites using black-hat SEO tactics to manipulate their rankings.

Best Practices Moving Forward

Whether your site was negatively impacted by this update or not, the long-term approach for your site will remain the same.

Focus on:

• Publishing original, valuable content
• Following Google’s Search Essentials
• Avoiding manipulative SEO tactics
• Don’t create pages designed to manipulate search engines but create pages for users.
• Regularly reviewing technical SEO and website performance

Websites that operate in conformity with Google’s Search quality guidelines will probably continue to rank well even after the update, as well as in following updates of ranking algorithms.

Looking Ahead

The August The August 2025 Spam Update will likely take several weeks to complete. As with all updates to how Google’s systems process to evaluate all websites globally, there will be typical ranking fluctuations for several weeks after the update has started to roll out.

Google will update the Search Status Dashboard when the update has completed.

Once the update has completed, we recommend you continue to track the search performance of your website and review any changes in your rankings. This will give you a clearer picture of the full extent of the update and enable you to see whether the changes you’ve made for SEO have been effective in the long term.

Final Thoughts

The August 2025 Spam Update underlines up with Google’s efforts to continually improve the quality of search results as well as to fight spam worldwide in the best possible way.

Google have not yet revealed the exact signals that this update will use to judge sites but everything about this update points in one direction: building high quality sites for users and following all of Google’s spam policies whilst ignoring the short lived fluctuations that happen during a large update such as this.

These updates are meant to help websites that have a genuine SEO strategy, with high quality content and a good user experience for their visitors.

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