Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, has confirmed that the Google Search team is still well-resourced in its fight against search spam.
Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Google Search, has confirmed that the Google Search team is still well-resourced in its fight against search spam. The spam team continues to update its spam algorithms, such as the latest Google August 2026 spam update, to help reduce spam in Google Search results.
As you know, Google’s August 2026 spam update began on August 18th and concluded on August 21st. But the volatility has not calmed down since and I think it is time I document it
The Google August 2026 spam update is now done rolling out. It started on Tuesday, August 18, 2026 at around 12:30 pm ET and completed on August 21, 2026 at around 4:50 am. Despite some people feeling the update started soon, Google’s John Mueller said it did not.
Google’s John Mueller reiterated what Google has said numerous times already, that Google does not wait to announce the update.
Google has just announced the release of the August 2026 spam update and said it should only take a few days to roll out. This is a global update and is expected to impact all languages.
Gary Illyes from Google said Google Search will eventually support the new HTTP QUERY method.
We saw a spike in volatility yesterday amongst the Google Search results rankings. There was a spike in ranking movement outside the day-to-day norm that seemed to start yesterday and maybe into today. The chatter is somewhat cool, but the tools showed a spike in the Google rank volatility.
Yes, I reported Google Search ranking volatility over this past weekend, but I am seeing a large increase in the chatter within the SEO community over the past 24 hours or so. The chatter seems consistent with a big Google Search algorithm update that is underway but at this point, Google has not yet confirmed it and may never confirm it.
I am seeing signs of another Google Search ranking update with a lot of volatility hitting this past weekend again.