On October 8, Google quietly put a bow on their September 2026 spam update. They've been rolling it out for nearly two weeks, and if your website has a stack of near-identical service pages, there's a decent chance you felt it. (or will feel it soon) This is the fourth spam update of 2026, and it behaved nothing like the others. The update in March was over in about 19 and a half hours. June wrapped in two days. August took two days and change. September's? It needed 13 days

Quick quiz: how many of your Google reviews can a stranger see right now, without logging in to anything? If you said "all of them," you would have been correct. Until just a few days ago. Late last month, Google quietly changed the rules. Search Engine Roundtable reported on September 30 that Google Maps now asks visitors to sign in to a Google account before they can read all of a business's reviews, and not just read them... the sign-in gate also hits sorting reviews, sear