Manual Actions and Security Issues in Google
If your Google Rankings Drop or your Website Cannot Be Found On Google’s Search Engine this may be due to a Manual Action Suffering from such an event is due to having had your webpage and/or website assessed by a Google Reviewer; this means that they have assigned you a Manual Action which can greatly impact your position when users perform searches related to your products or services, how much traffic you receive from Search Engines and other Websites, and the overall health of your Website.
Through this blog, we will touch on Manual Actions in Google, what they are, the causes, the various types of Manual Actions, and how to recover from them.
What Are Manual Actions in Google?
Manual Actions from Google can be defined as “Punishments” from Human Reviewers. Human Reviewers determine whether or not your webpage or website violates the rules and regulations outlined in Google’s Web Spam Policy or other accompanying guidelines. Manual Actions are different than Algorithmic Penalties (like Panda or Penguin) in that they are caused by a Human (Google) who has assessed the webpage/website and issued the manual punishment as a result.
When websites are issued, Manually Actioned Websites normally receive a significant drop (or loss) of Ranking in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs); in some extreme cases, they are completely removed from Google’s Index and cannot be found within a Google Search. To tell if your page has been affected by a manual action, you may review Google Search Console for the Manual Action Tool.
What Causes a Website to Receive a Manual Action Report?
There are many common reasons that would cause a website to receive a Manual Action Report from Google; understanding these is very important for both preventing a Manual Action as well as recovering from one.
Unnatural Links (Inbound and Outbound)
One of the major reasons for a manual penalty from Google is unnatural or manipulative link building. Unnatural linking would be:
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
Exchanging excessive amounts of links
Acquiring links from low-quality directories/bookmark sites
Linking from link farms/PBNs
Embedding hidden links in your website content
Thin or Duplicate Content
Google highly rewards sites that have original, high-quality content. Don’t make the mistake of creating pages that have little or no information, using scraped content from another site, or having multiple pages with identical or highly similar content, as you can receive a manual penalty from the Google manual review team.
Cloaking and Hidden Text
Cloaking is defined as the process of delivering to the Google bot a different set of information than you deliver to human visitors. Hiding text using either white-on-white fonts or tiny font sizes in an attempt to stuff keywords in a non-visible fashion to human visitors is a form of cloaking and a highly deceptive way to violate Google's webmaster guidelines.
Pure Spam
Sites that exist solely to manipulate search engine rankings (for example, auto-generated content sites, spun article sites, and other sites that contain nothing but random nonsensical strings of keywords) will be considered pure spam. As a result, they are generally going to get hit with the most aggressive manual penalty possible by Google.
User-Generated Spam
If you allow others to post on your site (for example, a forum, comments, or reviews) and do not moderate the spam on your site, Google may also assign you a manual penalty for user-generated spammy content, even if you did not create it yourself.
Hacked or Malicious Content
A website can be hacked or suffer from malware infection on the site because of vulnerabilities created by programming errors within the code. Once this happens, the hackers can inject harmful content or spammy content into the site, creating a security risk to Google's users. This is considered by Google not only to be spam, but also a threat to the security of users, as such websites will be marked by Google as having security issues on Search Console; search engines will also remove any manual actions that are applied to such websites for this reason.
Spammy, Structured Markup
If a website has improperly used structured data markup (such as including a review star rating or adding breadcrumbs when they do not exist), this can result in receiving a manual action for rich results that do not actually exist for the page containing the markup.
Types of Manual Actions Google Issues
Google may issue a manual action to either the entire website or just a specific webpage depending on the nature of the infraction. Below are the most common types of manual actions that the Google Search Team issues:
Site-wide Manual Actions
These are applied to an entire site due to a serious infraction, and generally relate to unlawful conduct, including:
Pure spam
Unnatural links to or from your site
Cloaking
Partial Manual Action
These are only applied to specific pages or groups of pages on the website and the rest of the site is unaffected. For instance, a partial manual action may have occurred on the specific landing page that contained keyword stuffing and not affect any other pages of the website.
Security Issues
Although security issues are not technically considered to be a manual action, they are generally very similar in that they relate to security; Search Console contains information about security issues that have been identified by Google and can have the same type of consequences as those contained in a manual action.
The following issues may be causing this:
Malware or malicious software downloads were found on your page
Fake phishing pages pretending to be companies and/or other trusted people
Misleading content that attempts to deceive visitors into giving out personal information
Content from third parties that have attacked your website
Problems with security may result in Google showing warnings to users who try to navigate to your website which will ultimately lead to a more severe decrease in organic traffic than a standard manual penalty from Google will result in.
How to Check for Manual Actions in Google Search Console
Webmasters can view manual actions imposed by Google through Google Search Console. Here is how to do it:
Log in to Google Search Console at search.google.com/search-console
Select your property (website)
In the left-hand navigation, click on 'Security & Manual Actions'
Click 'Manual Actions'
If a penalty exists, you will see details about the type of violation and the affected URLs
The Impact of a Google Manual Action Penalty
The possible impact of recovering from a Google manual action will be substantially affected by how severe and/or widespread the violation(s) were:
Substantial drop in natural search rankings
Certain pages could be removed completely from Google’s search index
Could lose rich snippets, featured snippets, or knowledge panel type of information
Significant decrease in the amount of organic traffic you receive, as well as leads, as a result of not ranking well
Long-lasting damage to your brand’s reputation.
If the violations were severe enough to warrant being labeled "pure spam," recovery can take many months after rectifying all issues.
How to Recover from Google Manual Actions
To recover from a manual action taken against a website, the process should be systematic. The steps to follow are:
Understand the Violation
The first step in the remediation process is to review the manual action notice located in Search Console (old one, pending a new release) and read the description of the issue and find the link to the relevant policy. Understanding what was flagged will allow for a more effective remediation.
Fix the Problem
Depending on the type of manual action taken against your website, your remediation steps will differ. If the issues were link-based, perform a link audit on your backlink profile using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console to identify toxic or unnatural links and request removal or disavow them using Google's disavow tool if removal isn't possible. If the issue was content-related, rewrite thin or duplicate content, remove doorway pages, and ensure all content provides genuine value. If the action was for cloaking/hiding text, make sure user and crawler views are identical, and the source code contains no misleading tags.
Submit a Reconsideration Request
Once all issues are resolved, submit a reconsideration request through Google Search Console. This request should include a detailed explanation of what was wrong, what specific actions you took to fix the issues, and evidence of your remediation efforts (such as screenshots, disavow files, or updated content).
Be honest and thorough. Google's reviewers are experienced, and vague or incomplete requests are typically rejected.
Wait for Google’s Response
After submitting your request, Google will review your site and respond, typically within a few weeks. If the response indicates the issue still exists, repeat the process more thoroughly. If the manual action is revoked, your rankings may begin to recover, though this is not always instant.
Preventing Future Manual Actions
As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The following are some of the best practices that you may wish to consider in order to ensure that your site is compliant with the Google Webmaster Guidelines so that future manual actions do not occur:
Create backlinks naturally through quality content, outreach and legitimate partnerships
Audit and disavow harmful links from your backlink profile on a regular schedule
Publish original, high-quality, well-researched and user-oriented content
Maintain an SSL certificate for your site as well as regularly performing malware scans
Accurately and appropriately use structured data on your pages
Moderate user-generated content to help prevent spam
Never use black hat SEO tactics (e.g., PBNs, cloaking, keyword stuffing)
Subscribe to and keep up-to-date with the Google Search Central blog, algorithm updates, and Google product updates
Manual Actions vs. Algorithmic Penalties: What's the Difference?
There is often confusion among site owners as to what the difference is between an algorithm penalty and a manual action. While both types of penalties will have negative effects on your rankings, there are significant differences between the two penalties:
Manual Actions: Applied by a human Google reviewer, visible in Search Console, requires a reconsideration request to resolve.
Algorithmic Penalties: Applied automatically by Google's algorithms (e.g., Panda, Penguin), not visible in Search Console as a specific notice, resolved when the algorithm re-crawls your site after fixes are made.
Final Thoughts
A manual action from Google should be taken very seriously, but a manual action does not necessarily mean that your website is done for. By having a clear understanding of the issues related to the manual action, conducting your remediation activities in a disciplined manner, and composing a sufficient reconsideration request, most websites should be able to recover and regain their search visibility.
Whether your site has been penalized or you want to do an audit of your site's health and search visibility, always make user experience and white hat SEO best practices your #1 priority in everything you do. Google develops its algorithms and employs people to ensure that the best possible content is provided to users; therefore, if your website is aligned to provide the best possible user experience, you will always be in excellent standing with Google in the long run.
If you think your site has been penalized or simply want to audit the health and search visibility of your site, you should begin by reviewing the Manual Actions and Security Issues sections of the Google Search Console.
