In the past, most readers of my content didn’t have to worry about spam updates. However, I think many of you were actually affected by the August 26, 2025 spam update.
Recently appointed VP, Head of Search Liz Reid’s interview with WSJshe said Google had have expanded their definition of spam:
“We’ve expanded beyond that spam concept to low-quality content, right, that content that doesn’t add much, that tells you what everyone else knows and isn’t bringing, and we’re trying to highlight more and more content, especially from someone who has really gone in and brought their perspective, brought their expertise and put real time and craftsmanship into the work.”
Some of the sites I monitor are experiencing a drop in clicks coinciding with the August 26, 2025 spam update. These are not sites that you would consider spam. But her Are Generally, websites that have published a large amount of content primarily for SEO reasons.
How can you tell if you are affected?
To determine if you are affected by the August 26, 2025 spam update, open GSC or GA4 and hover your cursor over that date. Can you see an obvious drop in clicks on or shortly after this date?
Note: You can’t really tell much based on impressions and average ranking position because that’s where the problem lies Google has removed the ability to search with &num=100 This resulted in most websites seeing an increase in average ranking and a decrease in impressions starting around September 11th. However, if clicks decline after August 26th, Google may have deemed your content unoriginal and of no added value. It’s also worth checking out Your top topics on Google Trends to ensure that this decline is not simply due to changes in search behavior.
Here you can find out which pages are affected
In GSC, compare the period from August 26, 2025 to September 23, 2025 with the previous 4-week period from July 28, 2025 to August 25, 2025.
Then click on Pages and look for pages with a large click difference.
Or, better yet, export these pages to Google Sheets by clicking Export in the top right, inserting a column to the right of column C, and using this formula:
=B2-C2
Copy that to the entire column.
You can then right click on column D and sort from A to Z. The pages will then be displayed in order of how many clicks they lost.
If you only lost clicks on one or two pages, it probably wasn’t due to the spam update. However, if you’ve been losing clicks on a lot of pages, look at what patterns they follow. Are these all blog sites? Do they all belong to a certain category? Are these pages written primarily for SEO purposes?
Bonus: Use my originality gem for improvement ideas
If you subscribe to this Paid content in my community, the search baryou can use my originality agent. Enter your URL and you will find out whether the page has truly original content. You’ll also get 20 ideas to improve this content.
Here’s a look at what the agent said about my review of Gemini Enterprise.
What if you saw a spike after August 26th?
Some of the sites I monitor experienced significant spikes that coincided with the rollout of this spam update.
This may be because spammy websites above you have been downgraded. Or it could be that these sites are rewarded for their great content. It may be worth doing the exercise above and seeing what you’ve covered in these pages to represent your real-world experiences, or if you’ve added any unique and helpful images and diagrams. You can use this observation to improve the rest of your content.
Can you recover?
Spam updates are difficult. Google likely uses machine learning systems to identify pages that have patterns similar to the pages they have deemed unoriginal. I wrote more about this in this post with my thoughts on SpamBrain. For most websites affected by the August 2025 Spam Update, it is unlikely that you will be able to restore traffic to every page that has lost rankings and clicks. However, if you are able to improve your content so that it is truly original, and if you can do this on a significant number of pages on your site, you are likely to see improvement.
Original doesn’t just mean in words. Ask yourself, “What does this content add to the body of knowledge on this topic on the Internet that doesn’t currently exist?”
In December 2022 Google has added “Experience” to EAT. The most original and helpful content is based on real-world experiences. For many years, Google relied on us to provide informational content, but now that AI can answer most informational queries, experiential content is truly needed in search. It is often difficult for an SEO to achieve this alone!
Here is a strategy that has several super smart SEOs that I recommend Use in SEO for business. Have a regular video call with the owner or employees of the company you work with. Ask them what they did at their company this month. What questions were people asking? What’s new in your industry? What do you want to be covered about your topics on the Internet that isn’t currently the case? Speak to the business owner for a full hour, then pass the transcript to your preferred LLM and ask them to extract content ideas from it based on the business owner’s experience and expertise. It’s very difficult to create truly engaging and original content if you don’t know a company thoroughly.
For this reason, I think it will be difficult, although not impossible, for sites affected by the August 2025 core update to recover.
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