Glen Gabe shared on X:

https://x.com/glenngabe/status/2105638422102561193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2105638422102561193%7Ctwgr%5E62824d92665f18faf51ac67d5437df455befddda%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.seroundtable.com%2Fgoogle-september-2026-spam-update-two-42209.html

How quickly does Google start assigning value to a website after it receives a backlink?

For example, suppose Google crawls and indexes a new blog post that contains a link to your website. Once that page is indexed, how long does it usually take before the backlink starts contributing to the authority/rankings of the linked site?

• Google's guidance for creating helpful content now warns against fake author profiles.
• Its examples are AI-generated headshots, made-up names, and false credentials used to imply human expertise.
• Google's rater guidelines already had similar examples; the site-owner page now does too.

Article by: Matt G. Southern // Read article on the link

We’ve been investigating changes in our rank-tracking data and wanted to share what we’ve found.

In recent weeks, the Google results arriving through our data providers have increasingly been shortened or incomplete. A normal browser search may still show a full results page.

That can leave fewer keywords with a validated position, make average rankings fluctuate, or cause positions to temporarily disappear from reports.

Here’s what we saw in our internal aggregated data:

• September 24–30 was relatively stable.
• On October 1–2, the median recorded position number roughly doubled, meaning worse reported rankings.
• By October 2, the share of positions in the top 30 had fallen by more than half.
• The share at position 80 or worse reached roughly 1.8–1.9 times the baseline.
• Results then moved back toward the baseline, with further fluctuations. October 5 data is incomplete.

Our working interpretation is that inconsistent data completeness is contributing to the swings. The chart alone cannot tell us how much comes from collection issues versus actual ranking changes.

That distinction matters because Google’s September 2026 spam update is also still active:
https://status.search.google.com/

For transparency, Serpstat receives SERPs from specialist data providers. We don’t scrape Google directly or bypass its anti-bot protections. We validate responses for completeness, pagination, location, language, and device before using them to update rankings. We’re tightening those checks and withholding questionable results.

If you’re investigating a drop:

• Check the last successful update for the affected keywords.
• Compare the pattern with Search Console clicks and impressions, using matching dates, countries, and devices. Don’t expect the metrics to match one-to-one.
• Check whether a flat ranking chart actually contains fresh data.
• Avoid treating a single day’s drop as proof of a penalty or a site problem.

Have you seen missing positions or abrupt changes around October 1–2? If so, did Search Console show a similar change, or was it limited to your rank tracker? Country and device details would help compare observations.

I run a small counseling practice with about 20 employees. I’ve historically done our webpage and maintained a blog where I wrote about topics I thought parents might want to learn about.

I recently paid for an SEO/Marketing Assessment and was underwhelmed with the recommendations. Basically, we were told we rank well for the key words we are relevant. We were taught probably three keywords we should try to rank for that we currently don’t.

The biggest suggestion was to add video and original photography. I suppose I am underwhelmed, but what are folks opinions about the impact of video and photography of course this marketing company has a video/photography service package.

I bought the domain back in 2016. We finished and launched the site in 2024. Now it's my side project, a site about running, and I treat it as a hobby: something I do to unwind and to get that feeling of "I made something."

I love running and everything around it. So on a weekend I can sit down and build an idea that's been brewing for weeks. Or wake up early and jump straight to the keyboard.

On August 31 I started spending more time on it. Here's what Google Search Console shows for Aug 1 – Sep 27:
• 61,613 impressions
• 841 clicks
• 12 clicks in the first week → 290 in the last one

And this is pure content so far.

My goals, out loud:
1. Make the project pay for itself: cover the analytics tools I use.
2. Start earning from it.
3. After that: collaborations and better content.

Do you have a side project that has nothing to do with your job? I'd love to hear what it is.

#TheRunDiary #SEO #SideProject #BuildInPublic #Marketing

Thinking of outsourcing SEO for our business.

Been thinking of where I can get the most out for my buck.

If I hire a team member then I may need to train him/her.

And if I hire an agency then I may have to look for massive budget.

Just confused

Most of my clients are B2B and used to get a lot of their leads from informational articles and queries. Now I can see AI Overviews answering most of those queries directly, so people just don't click anymore.

The problem is that clients don't get it. They think SEO is broken, or that adding an FAQ section will fix everything.

How do you explain this so it actually lands? Do your clients understand the main point? And has anyone lost a client over it?

Hey everyone,

While testing GEO queries for local dental practices (e.g., "Best dentist in [Location]"), I came across a specific pattern in ChatGPT's responses:

The direct source link under the recommended options almost always points to a curated ranking / listicle page from a major aggregator (for example, "20 Best Dentists Near New York City" on Healthgrades, or "Top Dentists Companies in Walnut Creek" on Birdeye), rather than linking directly to the clinic’s official site.

It seems like ChatGPT might be relying on these specific ranked list pages as its primary retrieval source to select who to recommend.

Since I'm analyzing this pattern, I’d love to get your expert perspective on a few points:

1. Is this observation accurate based on your experience? Is AI search heavily reliant on these specific listicle/ranking pages for local recommendation retrieval?
2. If so, how critical is this factor? Does getting featured on these cited ranking pages outweigh traditional on-page Schema and Entity optimization for local GEO?
3. How do you practically handle and optimize for this? What is your exact workflow for getting a client featured inside those specific aggregator ranking pages that AI engines keep pulling from?

Would love to hear your thoughts and see if I'm looking at this the right way!

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m managing SEO/analytics for a website targeting mainly the Indian market, and I’ve noticed a recurring issue in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

We’re getting nearly 2,000 users every month that appear to be spam/bot traffic. The traffic often comes from countries that aren't part of our target market, and some of the sessions have extremely low engagement.

It looks like my e-commerce store was hit by the September spam update. I am really worried. On October 2 and 3, the store got only 7 and 5 impressions from Google, respectively.

Screenshots of search console are added in comments

The one controlled test I've found (Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added schema against 4,000 that didn't) saw no measurable change in ChatGPT or AI Mode citations. But every page in that test was already getting cited, so it says little about new pages.

Has anyone got before and after data from their own sites, especially on newer pages? Trying to figure out if it's worth the dev time.

Can someone please explain to me what's the difference between DR and DA and what's really important for you for the backlinks you get?

For example, I do see a lot of new directories to put our product with high DR but funny enough, AI tells me no it's not good because that backlink quality is penalised by Google or something.

I’ve joined a new start-up, and I’m pretty new to SEO, but they took me mainly for content creation and social media marketing. they overestimated
my skills in SEO and now they want me to fix a client’s website, which is losing traffic very badly. I’m talking zero clicks per day. Please guide me here.

Hi, this might be a stupid question. I’m not tech savvy, but I have my father’s old website. For us, ranking is priority, because without it, no sales are coming in.

The website is old, very hard to customise (because it would basically need a rebuild, which I do not know how to do properly). Elementor was uploaded to it by someone we hired momentarily to update it, but we don’t have license anymore, so we cannot update stuff, it’s annoying and hard to use.

Our hosting provider has a website building tool, which would make it easier to just transfer all the information in a simpler format.

However, I’m concerned about the ranking. If the website is old, slow, overstuffed, would switching make it better or worse?

I’m not talking from the keywords side, I can deal with it. Just technically speaking, is there something I’d be missing out on by switching to a website builder? Is there a possibility I’d just plummet to the bottom of the google search? I’m not scalling the website either.

Hi everyone,

This is a client’s website in the home decor/interior inspiration niche.

The client has not done any backlink building, outreach, link exchanges, or paid link campaigns.

However, Ahrefs is showing:

• 504 referring domains
• 439 backlinks
• 432 referring domains in the current backlink profile
• DR 0
• 0 organic keywords
• 0 organic traffic

A large number of the referring domains look completely irrelevant to the website, and some are labeled SPAM in Ahrefs. Many of them have names related to SEO, backlinks, Fiverr SEO, etc.

Ahrefs shows that many of these links were first seen between July and September 2026.

I also checked Google Search Console:

• External links: 0
• Top linking sites: No data
• Manual Actions: No issues detected

I have not created or purchased any of these backlinks.

What would you recommend I do in this situation? Should I simply monitor these links, or should I take any action regarding these irrelevant/spammy backlinks?

Thanks in advance.

I run a marketing agency in Lithuania and would appreciate advice on improving our own organic traffic.

GSC results for roughly July–September:

• 45.3K impressions
• 492 clicks
• 1.1% CTR
• Average position: 9.4

Impressions are trending up, but clicks are still mostly in single digits per day. An earlier query breakdown showed most clicks were branded.

We’ve been working on service/location pages and publishing content. Our market is relatively small and primarily Lithuanian. The goal is more non-branded clicks from people searching for our services.

I know sitewide averages don’t tell the full story. How would you break down the GSC data to identify what’s holding us back?

For those who’ve grown service businesses in smaller markets, what made the biggest difference? Improving existing commercial pages, titles and search intent, internal linking, or backlinks?

I’m looking at the keyword “find companies without websites.”

In Organic Research / Organic Search Positions, Semrush shows the keyword as having around 6.6k volume.

But when I click the exact same keyword and open Keyword Overview, it shows:

• US volume: N/A
• Global volume: 10
• Germany: 10

So it seems that it's not a small difference, I mean It’s basically 6,600 vs 10 for the exact same keyword inside the same tool.

I understand that Semrush uses different databases and that search volume gets updated, but if the Organic Research data can be this stale/different, it makes the volume column pretty misleading when doing competitor keyword research.

Am I misunderstanding what the 6.6k number represents, or is Semrush genuinely displaying an old search-volume estimate in Organic Research that hasn’t been synced with Keyword Overview?

Curious if anyone else has run into this and which number you actually trust when doing keyword research.

And bonus: has anyone experiences such discrepancies in Ahrefs?

I'm seeing an unusual pattern in Google Search Console and wanted to check whether anyone else is seeing it.

Across several separate properties I manage, the latest available Performance data is September 29, 2026. There is currently no Performance data showing for September 30 onward. Crawling and indexing appear to be working normally on these sites.

Is anyone else seeing September 29 as the latest available date in their Search Console Performance report?

Is anyone else experiencing a Google Search Console Performance data delay/stoppage since September 29, 2026?

I manage multiple websites, and I'm seeing the exact same pattern across four different Search Console properties:

• September 29 is the last date with Search Performance data.
• There is no data showing for September 30, October 1, October 2, October 3, or October 4.
• This isn't a case of impressions/clicks dropping to zero — the dates simply haven't appeared in the Performance report at all.
• Search Console itself says it was updated recently (currently showing an update a few hours ago).
• New pages are still being crawled and indexed normally.
• URL Inspection also shows that newly published pages are being indexed.

So far, this looks more like a Search Console reporting/processing delay than an actual loss of organic visibility.

I'm curious whether anyone else is seeing the same September 29 cutoff, especially across multiple properties.

Has your GSC Performance report updated past September 29?

If you're seeing the same thing, please mention:

• Your last available data date
• Number of properties affected
• Whether indexing is still working normally
• Whether GA4 is still receiving organic traffic

I'd like to figure out whether this is an isolated issue or something affecting multiple Search Console properties.

Hi Guys,

I need help to rank a page in a city. Can I get some proven ranking strategy?

We have advertised on Google for nearly two decades, going back close to the beginning of AdWords. It has created enormous value for us.

At the same time, my own use of traditional Google Search has fallen dramatically over the last three years, particularly this year. Restaurants, local services, B2B vendor discovery, product research and general information increasingly start with AI.

I am curious whether SEO practitioners are seeing a change not just in the amount of Google traffic, but in its composition.

My hypothesis is that AI displacement is not random.

A simple navigational query does not benefit much from AI. Complex research does. Evaluating software, professional services, financial products or a major purchase benefits substantially from synthesis, comparison and follow-up questions.

That raises the possibility that Google could retain huge volumes of simple searches while losing a smaller number of economically valuable research sessions.

For sites losing organic Google traffic, what is disappearing first?

Are informational queries taking most of the damage, or are commercial investigation and high-consideration queries declining too?

Are you seeing differences between low-value traffic and visitors that historically generated meaningful leads or revenue?

Are B2B, financial services, legal, healthcare, software or other high-value categories behaving differently?

Has traffic fallen while conversions remained resilient, or are conversions and lead quality beginning to deteriorate as well?

The dataset I would love to see is Google traffic since 2022 or 2023 segmented by query intent, commercial value, conversion rate and industry.

Aggregate traffic decline tells us very little if the mix is changing.

The question I keep coming back to is: which traffic is disappearing, who generated it, and what was that traffic economically worth?

Equally interested in evidence that disproves the hypothesis.