Google has confirmed the September 2026 spam update, the lead story in Search Engine Roundtable's latest Search News Buzz video recap from Barry Schwartz.

The recap bundles four developments search professionals tracked this month: the new spam update rollout, a wave of reports about Discover traffic disappearing, fresh reporting for multimodal search, and the addition of CrUX ad metrics inside the Page Experience report.

What do we know about the September 2026 spam update?

Google's spam updates target policy-violating behavior rather than assessing content quality the way core updates do. The September 2026 rollout is the confirmed engine-side event in this recap, and site owners watching their logs should treat unexplained ranking movement this month as potentially tied to it.

Schwartz's video format walks through each story in sequence, so the spam update segment is where verified Google action ends and community observation begins. The other three items in the recap draw heavily on tool signals, publisher reports, and dashboard changes rather than official confirmation.

Why are publishers saying goodbye to Discover traffic?

The recap's second headline — "Goodbye Discover Traffic" — signals a surge of complaints from publishers who saw Google Discover referrals collapse. Discover has never offered stability guarantees; Google has repeatedly said the feed's traffic can fluctuate without notice and that eligibility can shift regardless of site quality.

For news, entertainment, and lifestyle publishers who lean on Discover for a large share of sessions, a sustained drop of this kind forces a hard look at channel diversification. The recap treats these reports as tool-and-analytics observations from affected site owners, not as a confirmed Google policy change.

What is multimodal search reporting?

The third item covers new reporting capabilities around multimodal search — queries and results that mix text, images, and other input modes. As search behavior shifts toward AI-driven and visual surfaces, performance measurement has lagged behind what users actually see. Any new reporting that surfaces how multimodal results behave matters for publishers trying to attribute traffic from surfaces that don't behave like classic ten blue links.

Why do CrUX ad metrics in Page Experience matter?

The final segment addresses Chrome UX Report ad metrics appearing in the Page Experience reporting context. Page Experience reporting already aggregates field data on loading, interactivity, and visual stability; extending that lens toward ad-related measurements would give advertisers and site owners a user-experience view of ad delivery rather than only of page content.

What separates confirmed from speculative here?

A quick ledger for readers sorting signal from noise:

• Confirmed by Google: the September 2026 spam update rollout.
• Community-reported, unconfirmed by Google: the Discover traffic losses described in the recap.
• Tooling and reporting changes: multimodal search reporting and CrUX ad metrics appearing in Page Experience, which stem from measurement surfaces rather than ranking systems.

That distinction matters because spam-update recoveries and Discover drops follow different playbooks. A spam-policy hit points to auditing compliance; a Discover decline often has no actionable trigger at all.

What should site owners watch next?

Monitor log data and Search Console through the spam update's rollout window for classification of any ranking shifts, keep an eye on whether Google issues follow-up guidance on Discover volatility, and check whether the new reporting surfaces — multimodal and CrUX ad metrics — appear in your own dashboards in the weeks ahead.