Google Link Spam Update Still Rolling Out 3 Weeks Later

Google announced on July 26, 2021, three-weeks and two days ago, that it started to roll the link spam update and that update would take about two-weeks to roll out. Well, like I said, it is three-weeks and two days and it is still not done rolling out.

Here is Google’s original announcement about the rollout of this update; “We’re launching a new link spam fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update.” This algorithm update, which will rollout across the next two weeks, is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages.”

We have been asking if it is done yet and we are being told, again and again, that it is not done yet:

Not yet done.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 9, 2021

and

Every time you ask, it gets longer 🙂

Seriously, no, it’s not done yet. I expect not much longer, though.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 13, 2021

and yesterday:

It’s not. A lot of it has, but it’s still got more to go. Maybe next week; unlikely this one. I do check back with the team regularly and expect to share when it is complete.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 17, 2021

So it might take twice as long as Google originally estimated, a total of four-weeks to fully roll out.

It is hard to know if the unconfirmed updates we’ve been seeing over the past week or not. In fact, today we are seeing some early signs of another update – maybe it is related to the tail end of this link spam update or maybe something else.

So hang on, we’ve got about another week to go.

Forum discussion at Twitter.