The March 2026 Spam Update was announced on 24th March 2026. It was scheduled to take a “few days” but was marked as RESOLVED just 24 hours later making it one of, if not the quickest pre-announced update ever. Data, analysis, and rankings of the affected domains will be added to this article as the information becomes available.
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- Google’s status page for the Spam Update Start date: 24th March 2026. Completed 25th March 2026. (1 day)
- For detailed information and data on all previous Google updates, see the SISTRIX update tracking page
- Information from Google on Spam Updates and Spambrain, the AI-based system that is updated during Google Spam Updates.
The last Spam Update was in August 2025 when there were clear penalties, despite the relatively small overall impact. Details can be found in our analysis here. The most recent core update was in December 2025.
SISTRIX Google Update and Feature Update Radar
The daily view on SERP updates can always be viewed in our Google Update Radar which shows the current level of movement relative to the last 90 days. The radar graphics are an indicator of SERPs changes across 1 million SERPs every day. Graphs for UK and US are shown below:
Data and Analysis
The SISTRIX Update radar has shown large amounts of background change in recent weeks and these are above the levels that were seen in the last spam update.
In addition there have also been big increases in both AI Overviews [report] and the Google Shopping feature across SERPs in recent weeks so this will also be affecting traffic levels coming from search.
Given the very quick nature of the update there is little chance of finding useable data but we’ll analyse the last 24hrs changes and report if we find anything.
1st April – Analysis of the spam update has closed due to the short duration, large background movements and the rollout of a new March Core Update, just 48 hours after the completion of the spam update.
