Manual Actions and Recovery

Manual actions are Google's decision about a site or part of it taken after a human review. The definition from the help: Google issues a manual action when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies. Most such actions address attempts to manipulate the search index. Three things matter: Google tells you about an action, everything must be fixed, and a reconsideration request must be written to a pattern. Before you blame a traffic drop on a manual action, make sure you actually see something in that report.

The basis is the help on the Manual Actions report and Google's spam policies. For the general logic of finding the cause of a drop see the lesson on traffic drops, and for the policies themselves the lesson on spam policies.

How a manual action differs from an algorithmic change

• A person makes the decision. Google detects policy-violating practices both through automated systems and, as needed, human review that can result in a manual action. The algorithms "in most cases automatically discover spam and remove it from results", and manual actions exist to protect the quality of the index;
• The consequence. Sites that violate the policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Most often pages are ranked lower or omitted without any visual indication to the user;
• Scope. An action can affect a whole site ("Affects all pages") or a pattern of URLs, for example a section. Not all pages matching the pattern are necessarily affected;
• Notification. If a site is affected, Google notifies you in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center. The report shows a count of actions at the top; if there are none, you see a green check mark.

Separately: the core updates covered in the lesson on core updates are broad and don't target specific sites, and what are known as Penguin and Helpful Content are no longer separate filters: they were folded into the core ranking systems, as the overview of ranking systems says. And if a traffic drop is not accompanied by an entry in the Manual actions report, the cause is different: see the lesson on traffic drops.

Kinds of manual actions

The help lists specific kinds, each with its own fix steps. Among them:

• Unnatural links to your site — buying links or taking part in link schemes to manipulate ranking;
• Unnatural links from your site;
• Thin content with little or no added value: thin affiliate pages, content from other sources such as scraped content, doorways;
• Cloaking and sneaky redirects;
• Hidden text and keyword stuffing;
• User-generated spam — on forums, guestbooks, profiles; a site abused with third-party spam;
• Structured data issues and other violations: from site reputation abuse to back button hijacking.

A hacked site is not in that list as a cause of a manual action: security threats, such as malware or phishing, Google treats separately and shows in the Security Issues report (see the causes of drops in the guide to debugging traffic drops).

How to fix it and file a reconsideration request

1. Read the description of the action in the report: the type, a short description, the affected pages. The "Learn more" link gives the fix steps for that kind;
2. Fix the violation on all affected pages. Google stresses it: fixing the issue on just some pages will not earn a partial return to search results. If there are several actions, fix all of them;
3. Check accessibility. Affected pages should not require a login, be behind a paywall, or be blocked by robots.txt or a noindex directive. You can test it in the URL Inspection tool; for robots.txt see the lesson on robots.txt and meta robots;
4. Select Request Review when everything is fixed on all pages, and describe the fixes. A good request does three things: explains the exact quality issue on the site, describes the steps taken to fix it and documents the outcome;
5. Do not resubmit before a decision on the previous request: Google sends a confirmation and later an email with the result;
6. Wait. A review can take several days or weeks, and for link-related requests usually longer.

If you recently bought a site that violated the policies before you owned it, fix what the report lists and say in the request that you recently acquired the site and it no longer violates the policies.

If the action is about links

This is where most mistakes happen. The steps from the help for "Unnatural links to your site":

1. download the list of links from Search Console: by linking host or in chronological order;
2. find links that violate the link spam policy; if the list is large, start with the sites that link most or links created in the last few months;
3. contact the site owners and ask them to remove the links or prevent them passing PageRank, for example with rel="nofollow" or a more specific attribute;
4. only those you could not get removed, add to the disavow tool.

Google separately warns that the Disavow links tool is often used incorrectly: if you can get a link removed, make a good-faith effort first; blindly adding all backlinks to the file is not a good-faith effort and will not make the request successful; do not disavow organic links; for several links from one domain use the domain: operator. In the request include documentation of what was removed and an explanation of links you could not remove. The analysis of a link profile is in the lesson on backlink auditing.

What the common beliefs do not support

• "A penalty imposed by a Quality Team employee": Google speaks of a human reviewer and non-compliance with spam policies;
• A period "usually 2-4 weeks": it says "several days or weeks", longer for links;
• Penguin and Helpful Content as live filters: these are retired systems folded into the core;
• A hack as a cause of a manual action.

Checklist

1. The Manual actions report is checked regularly and messages are not missed.
2. The kind of action and the affected pages are known.
3. The violation is fixed on all affected pages.
4. Pages are accessible for Google to check: no login, paywall, block or noindex.
5. The request describes the problem, the fix steps and the outcome.
6. For a link action: removal of links is attempted first and only then disavowal of the rest.
7. A second request is not sent before a decision on the first.

Mistakes

• Looking for a manual action without opening the report: more often the cause of a drop is different.
• Fixing some pages and at once expecting a partial return.
• Disavowing all backlinks without trying to remove them.
• Resubmitting the request without waiting for an answer.
• Leaving affected pages behind a login, a paywall or noindex.

What comes next

Next is the lesson on spam policies: which practices Google counts as spam and how they differ from acceptable optimization.