Google’s August 2026 spam update hit rankings harder than normal

Google’s August 2026 spam update saw an 82% increase in top 10 URLs dropping out of the top 100 compared with a period without a confirmed ranking update, according to new SE Ranking data.

During the update, 16.71% of URLs that had ranked in Google’s top 10 fell beyond position 100 for the same keyword, compared with 9.2% during a similar five-day period in July. That made a top 10 URL about 1.8 times more likely to disappear from the top 100 during the spam update.

By the numbers. Here’s some data SE Ranking shared with Search Engine Land:

Volatility spanned all 20 niches. The ranking volatility was broad across the 20 industries SE Ranking tracked.

• Top 10 volatility ranged from 74.64% in real estate to 85.55% in fashion and beauty.
• YMYL categories, including real estate and healthcare, were among the steadiest.
• The data doesn’t show whether particular types of sites, content, or spam tactics were disproportionately affected. SE Ranking didn’t conduct a URL- or domain-level analysis of the pages that lost rankings or the pages that replaced them.

Why we care. Moving from Google’s top 10 to beyond position 100 is a huge ranking loss compared to day-to-day search volatility. The 82% increase indicates how disruptive the August 2026 spam update was compared with Google’s normal search churn.

About the data. SE Ranking analyzed U.S. organic Google results for the same 100,000 keywords across 20 industries. It compared rankings from Aug. 17 and Aug. 22, immediately before and after the spam update, with a baseline comparison of July 26 and July 31, when Google had no confirmed ranking update. SE Ranking only tracked positions 1 through 100, so the data doesn’t show whether the URLs that disappeared were deindexed or simply fell below position 100. It also doesn’t explain why those particular pages lost their rankings.