A Manual Action (also known as “Google penalty”) is a manual penalty imposed by Google on a website that has been reviewed by a human reviewer.
The human reviewer will deem the website as non-compliant with Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines and impose the manual action.
Manual actions from Google can affect the entire site or individual pages.
When Google issues a Manual Action penalty, the affected site or specific pages may get demoted or completely removed from Google Search results until the issue is resolved.
Manual actions and penalties are different from algorithmic penalties.
Algorithmic penalties are issued as a result of the Google algorithm automatically detecting an issue with a website.
Manual actions and penalties are always given by a human team member.
What Will I Learn?
A website would receive a manual action because Google has detected that the website is purposely doing something against their terms and conditions to manipulate the Google search rankings.
Here is a complete list of manual actions that can be applied by Google against a website:
Remember:
Google takes manual actions very seriously.
They have a complete process used by the Google quality rater team before they issue the manual penalty.
The good news is that Google penalty recovery is possible. But it is hard work and often takes months to reverse the manual action.
To see if you have a manual action, log in to Google Search Console and click on the “Manual Actions report”.
If you have a manual action, Google will notify you with a message.
It will look something like this:
The message will tell you what type of manual action you have, how many issues are detected and what pages are affected.
To remove a Manual Action, fix the issues detailed in the Google Search Console Manual Actions report.
Google often gives you guidelines on what you must do to lift the manual action. But sometimes the guidelines can be vague.
That’s when you’ll need to contact a Google penalty recovery service to assist you.
Once you have fixed the issue, you can submit a reconsideration request to Google explaining the changes made.
Google will then review and confirm the fixes before lifting the penalty.
Important Note: This process can take months, depending on the type of manual action and how many issues were detected.
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