Google Spam Update: Your 40 City Pages Aren’t Fooling Anyone

Google is in the middle of another spam update, and somewhere a plumber’s website with 47 nearly identical city pages is sweating. Not the plumber. The plumber has no idea those pages exist. Somebody sold him a “local SEO package” in 2022 and he’s been paying for it monthly ever since.

If your traffic did something weird in the last week or so, here’s what’s going on and what’s actually worth checking.

The short version

• Google released its September 2026 spam update on September 24 and said the rollout could take up to two weeks. SEO trackers saw a second wave of movement around September 30.
• Spam updates go after tactics, not small businesses. The usual suspects are mass-produced pages, doorway pages and keyword stuffing.
• The small business pattern most at risk is the pile of copy-paste “service in [city]” pages. Fewer, better pages beat a stack of clones.

What is the Google September 2026 spam update?

It’s a sitewide cleanup pass aimed at pages that break Google’s spam policies. Google posted it on the Search Status Dashboard on September 24, said it applies globally in all languages, and said the rollout may take up to two weeks.

Then things got interesting around September 30. Several SEO tracking tools spiked again and a bunch of site owners reported big drops right on that date. Google didn’t announce a “phase two” (Google rarely narrates its own plot twists), but with a two-week window, stages are pretty normal.

So if you’re reading this while refreshing Search Console every eleven minutes, the honest answer is: it isn’t over yet. Don’t rip your whole site apart mid-rollout.

Will a spam update hurt my small business website?

Probably not, if your site is a normal site written for normal humans. A spam update isn’t a core update. It isn’t Google re-ranking everyone on quality. It’s Google going after specific tricks listed in its spam policies.

The catch is that a lot of small business owners are running those tricks without knowing it. You didn’t build the spam. You just bought it, in a nice bundle, with a monthly invoice and a report full of green arrows.

I see this all the time when I audit a site: the homepage is fine, the services page is fine, and then there’s a folder with 40 pages called “Pressure Washing Palm Coast,” “Pressure Washing Bunnell,” “Pressure Washing Ormond Beach” and so on. Same paragraphs. Different city name swapped in. Sometimes the swap didn’t even work and one page proudly serves “Pressure Washing [CITY].” Beautiful.

Are city landing pages considered doorway pages?

They can be, and the copy-paste kind is basically the textbook example. Google defines doorway abuse as sites or pages “created to rank for specific, similar search queries.” Forty clones of the same page with a new town name is exactly that.

Google’s policy on keyword stuffing also calls out lists of cities and regions a page is trying to rank for. You know that footer block that says “Serving Daytona, Ormond, Palm Coast, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Orlando, the Moon…” in tiny gray text? Yeah. That one.

A city page earns its place when it has something only that page could say. Real jobs you did there. Local photos. The specific permit headache in that county. Driving time and service area details that actually matter to the customer. If you can’t write three sentences that are true about that town and not the next one, you don’t need that page. You need one solid service area page and a good Google Business Profile.

This is a big part of how I approach local web design and SEO around Palm Coast: fewer pages, each one pulling its weight, instead of a crop of thin ones that make the whole site look half-assed to Google.

What about AI-written blog posts?

Volume is the problem, not the tool. Google’s scaled content abuse policy covers “many pages” generated mainly to manipulate rankings, and it doesn’t care whether a robot, an intern or a content farm in another time zone typed them.

I wrote about this a couple days ago when Google updated its guidance on AI content, and the spam update is the enforcement side of the same idea. Thirty “Top 10 Tips for Choosing a Roofer” posts in a month, none of them saying anything a real roofer would say, is a pattern Google has gotten pretty damn good at spotting.

Use AI to help you draft. Fine. Then put your actual opinion, your actual prices, your actual stories in it. If the post could run on a competitor’s site with only the logo swapped, it’s filler.

What should I do if my traffic dropped?

First, wait for the rollout to finish before you make big changes. Then look at which pages lost traffic, not just the sitewide number.

• If the losses are concentrated in city pages, tag pages or a blog full of thin posts, that’s your answer. Consolidate the useful stuff, redirect the rest, and delete what nobody would miss.
• Check for things you didn’t put there. Hacked sites get stuffed with spam pages all the time, and Google punishes the site, not the hacker. Search site:yourdomain.com and scroll. If you see pages for pills or casinos, that’s a security problem first.
• Look at what your SEO vendor has been publishing. Ask for a list of every page they’ve added. If they get cagey, that tells you plenty.

Recovery from spam issues isn’t instant. Google’s own guidance is that it can take months for its systems to see the cleanup. Which is a pain in the ass, but it’s also the best argument for not building the junk in the first place.

Questions people ask

How long does a Google spam update take?

Google said this one may take up to two weeks to roll out, starting September 24, 2026. Rankings can bounce around during that window, so judge the results after Google marks it complete.

Do I need to disavow links after a spam update?

Usually no. Google said this update isn’t specifically targeting link spam, and for most small business sites the disavow tool does more harm than good when used in a panic.

Is it safe to have pages for each town I serve?

Yes, if each one has real, unique information for that town. Swapping the city name into the same template is the risky version.

Look, I get the appeal of 40 pages. It feels like 40 lottery tickets. But Google is getting better at checking whether the tickets are photocopies, and a lean site with real content holds up through these updates without the drama. If you want me to look at what’s actually on your site and tell you what to keep, merge or toss, start here. No green arrows, I promise.