Google's August 2025 spam update is now rolling out and will take a few weeks to complete.

This is Google's first spam update since the December 2024 spam update, which caused widespread volatility.

As is tradition with these things, Google made the announcement through the Google Search Central LinkedIn account, saying:

"It may take a few weeks to complete. This is a normal spam update, and it will roll out for all languages and locations. We'll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done:"

The Google Search Status Dashboard confirmed that the update started on August 26, 2025, at 09:02 PDT and provided the same messaging, stating that the update will take a few weeks to complete. Users can refer back to the Google Search Status Dashboard for confirmation when the update has been completed.

August 2025 Spam Update Critical Information

  • Name: August 2025 Spam Update

  • Release Date: August 26th 2025

  • Duration: The update is expected to take "a few weeks" to completely roll out.

  • What is it?: The August 2025 spam update is Google's first spam update in more than 8 months. It affects all languages, regions, and types of websites, and represents a significant improvement to Google's automated spam detection systems.

What is a spam update?

What is a spam update and what exactly will it target? It's a great question.

The jargon answer is that a spam update is an improvement to the system that Google uses to detect spam in its algorithm.

According to Google, this means any content designed to deceive users or manipulate search results to improve rankings without providing real value to users.

Google employs a combination of systematic intervention and human intervention (manual checks conducted by quality raters) to monitor web spam. A spam update means that Google is making a significant change to its systematic spam detection systems.

Do spam updates target on-site or off-site spam practices?

This is the most important question and the one that still leaves the SEO community confused whenever a spam update rolls out. The key thing to understand is that spam updates can target both on-site and off-site spam practices.

Examples of on-site and off-site spam

Types of web spam that Google may act against or detect in its spam detection systems include:

On-site spam examples

  • Cloaking
  • Doorway abuse
  • Hacked content
  • Hidden text and link abuse
  • Keyword stuffing
  • Machine-generated traffic (AI Content)
  • Misleading functionality
  • Scaled content abuse (Programmatic SEO)
  • Site reputation abuse
  • Thin affiliation
  • User-generated spam

Off-site spam examples

  • Expired domain abuse
  • Link spam
  • Scraping
  • Sneaky redirects

All of the above examples are taken directly from Google's "Spam policies for Google web search" documentation.