Publishing Many Pages Is Not the Risk. Publishing Pages With Nothing to Say Is.

If someone has pitched you fifty city pages, or a batch of AI-written articles, your caution is justified. Google started its fourth spam update of 2026 on 24 September without saying what it targets, and updated its guidance on generative AI content on 1 October. This post covers what Google's spam policy says, what it says about AI, and a test you can run on your own pages. Mass page production sits at the riskiest edge of search engine optimization, where a shortcut can cost the whole site.

What Google's spam policy says about scaled content abuse

Google defines scaled content abuse by purpose, not by tool. In its spam policies, last updated 28 August 2026, it says: "Scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users."

The policy adds that the practice is typically about large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, "no matter how it's created." Its examples include, but aren't limited to:

• "Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users"
• "Scraping feeds, search results, or other content to generate many pages (including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques), where little value is provided to users"
• "Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding value"
• "Creating multiple sites with the intent of hiding the scaled nature of the content"
• "Creating many pages where the content makes little or no sense to a reader but contains search keywords"

A neighboring policy on doorway abuse lists pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page, and substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. Our reading, not Google's wording: a grid of city pages that are identical apart from the city name is close to the "substantially similar pages" that list describes.

AI assistance is not the violation, and Google says what is

Google does not say AI-written content is spam. Its guidance on generative AI content, last updated 1 October 2026, says that using generative AI tools or other similar tools "to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate Google's spam policy on scaled content abuse." The conditions are many pages and no added value.

The 1 October 2026 change added a passage on accuracy. It says generative models "don't retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words based on their training data," so their outputs may contain inaccuracies, and that "It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing." Google says that review also covers page titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text, not only the body. The page also says that sharing how a piece of content was created can give readers more context, so the expectation is a person who checks the work, not a ban on drafting tools.

What the September 2026 spam update means for you

The September 2026 spam update is a reason to check your batch-published pages, not proof that they are its target: Google has not said which spam policy or tactic this update addresses. Google started it on 24 September at 9:15 a.m. PDT and said the rollout may take up to two weeks. Search Engine Journal, quoting Google's Search Status Dashboard, reports it is the fourth confirmed spam update of 2026, after updates in March, June and August.

When this was written on 2 October 2026, the dashboard listed the update with no end date, so treat it as possibly still rolling out and check the dashboard for its current status. A traffic change during the rollout does not by itself show that this update caused it. Compare the dates in Search Console before you change anything.

What John Mueller said about programmatic pages

Google's John Mueller warned that bulk-generated pages can damage the whole site, not only the pages themselves. In a Bluesky reply about one site that generated pages from combinations of domain names, technologies and attributes, reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 7 September 2026, he said: "Programmatic SEO like this often leads to a site that's either spam, borderline spam, or low quality."

The same report quotes him saying Google's systems "have possibly lost faith in your site providing good value to users based on the old pages," and that "Resolving this tends to take time & significant effort to show the value." The practical reading is that a batch of weak pages is a bet on your site's reputation, and winning it back is slower than publishing the batch was.

A five-question test for your city pages, service grids and AI batches

A page passes if a customer would be glad to land on it, and if you can show why. This checklist is our own working rule built from the policy wording above, not a Google formula. Ask each page:

1. Would this page exist if search engines did not?
2. Does it contain something only you could write: a real project in that area, a price range you actually quote, a photo you took, a person who works there?
3. If you swap the city or service name for another, does the page still read the same? If yes, it is a template with one word replaced.
4. Did someone who knows the subject read every claim, address and price, and the page title and description, before it went live?
5. Could you send this page to a customer in a conversation without being embarrassed?

A page that fails two or more is a candidate to rewrite, merge or leave unpublished. Fix the template before you add more pages.

Applying it to the three packages you are likely to be offered

• City pages: a city or service-area page earns its place when it carries real local detail, and is a risk when it is identical to its neighbors apart from the place name. GrossiWeb's own approach is to keep a location page only where there is real local proof to put on it, and to list other cities as service areas. Our post on local SEO in 2026 explains the reasoning.
• Service-by-city grids: a page per service area earns its place when it carries real local detail, such as jobs done there, photos and local reviews; if the only difference between pages is the place name, one strong page per service usually serves the reader better than thirty near copies.
• AI blog batches: use AI to organize what your team already knows, then publish fewer pieces that a specialist has added to and checked. Our post on why more content is not helping you rank covers this side, and GrossiWeb's content and email marketing service writes each piece to answer a specific question buyers ask, rather than to fill a calendar.

What to do this week

Start with an inventory, not a deletion. You can do it with your sitemap and a spreadsheet.

1. List every page published in batches over the past year, from your sitemap or your content platform.
2. Run each one through the five questions and mark pass, rewrite or merge.
3. Pause any batch that is queued but not yet live until it passes.
4. Open Search Console and note which batch pages get impressions, and compare the weeks around 24 September to the weeks before.
5. Ask any vendor selling page volume to show three sample pages, who fact-checks them, and what real detail each one contains.

Nothing here needs special tools. If you want to compare how agencies scope this work, GrossiWeb's pricing page lists what each SEO tier includes.