Manual Action

Overview

A manual action is a penalty that a human reviewer at Google imposes on a site or specific pages after personally confirming a violation of the search quality guidelines. When a manual action is applied, part or all of the site ranks lower in or is removed from Google Search results. Whether one has been applied, and why, is shown in the Manual Actions report in Google Search Console, where you can also see the violation type and the pattern of affected pages.

People often refer to this loosely as a "penalty," but penalties come in two forms. One is a demotion applied automatically by an algorithm; the other is a manual action imposed directly by a person. A manual action is one type of penalty.

Manual Action vs. Algorithmic Demotion

The two differ in who applies them and how you are notified. Understanding this difference is what lets you choose the right response path.

Google states that "if your site has a manual action against it, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google Search results." An algorithmic demotion, by contrast, lowers or omits the ranking of a page or site with no visible indicator to the user.

Common Types

The Google Search Console Help documentation describes the following representative types of manual action.

• Unnatural links to your site — artificial inbound links intended to manipulate rankings.
• Unnatural links from your site — artificial outbound links, such as paid links.
• Cloaking and sneaky redirects — showing different content to Googlebot and to users, or secretly redirecting to a different page.
• Thin content with little or no value — scraped content, low-quality affiliate pages, doorway pages, and the like.
• Hidden text and keyword stuffing — invisible text or excessive repetition of keywords.
• User-generated spam — spam posted by visitors in comments, forums, profiles, and similar areas.
• Site abused by third-party spam — spam content posted in message boards, upload areas, and other open sections.
• Structured data issues — markup that violates the guidelines (for example, misleading or hidden markup).
• Site reputation abuse — third-party content published to leverage a host's reputation in a way that violates the spam policies.
• Sneaky mobile redirects — redirecting only mobile users to different content.

How to Check

To confirm whether one has been applied, sign in to Google Search Console and open the Security & Manual Actions > Manual Actions report in the left-hand menu. If there is no manual action, you see a green check mark with a "No issues detected" message. If there is one, the report shows the violation type, the scope of impact (sitewide match or partial match), and the pattern of affected pages.

Reconsideration Request Process

A reconsideration request is the procedure for asking Google to review your site again after you have fixed an issue flagged as a manual action or a security problem. The flow Google outlines is as follows.

1. Identify the specific violation type and reason from the report.
2. Identify every affected page.
3. Fix the issue completely, following the guidance provided. You must correct every affected page; if you fix only some of them, you will not return to search results even partially.
4. Confirm that Googlebot can access the fixed pages (there must be no login wall, no robots.txt block, and no noindex directive).
5. Submit the reconsideration request from the Manual Actions report, explaining the issues you found, the actions you took to fix them, and the outcome.
6. Wait for the result notification by email.

According to Google, review typically takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and link-related reconsideration requests can take longer than usual. Once your request is received, you get an email confirming it is active, and when the review is complete you get an email with the result.

Action Checklist

• Confirm the violation type and the scope of impact (sitewide or partial) in the Search Console Manual Actions report.
• Read the guidelines for that type and diagnose the exact cause of the violation.
• Fix every affected page without exception (a partial fix does not lead to recovery).
• For unnatural links, remove the links or handle them with the disavow tool.
• Check that the fixed pages are accessible to Googlebot, without robots.txt blocks, noindex directives, or login walls.
• Submit the reconsideration request, describing the violation, the corrective actions, and the outcome in concrete terms.
• Wait for the email notification, and if you are rejected, make further fixes and request again.

References and Sources

• Manual actions report — Google Search Console Help
• Reconsideration requests — Google Search Console Help