Manual action (Google penalty)
What is a manual action?
A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google when they find that pages on a site break Google’s spam policies. Affected pages, or the whole site, can rank lower or be removed from search results. Google tells you about it in Search Console’s Manual actions report.
Each manual action has a type and a scope: site-wide or partial (some pages or sections). Spam-related types include unnatural links to your site, unnatural links from your site, thin content with little or no added value, cloaking and/or sneaky redirects, hidden text and/or keyword stuffing, user-generated spam, site abused with third-party spam, spammy free host, major spam problems, cloaked images, sneaky mobile redirects, structured data issue, back button hijacking, AMP content mismatch and site reputation policy. There are separate types for News and Discover policy violations.
Manual actions are different from an algorithmic penalty. A manual action comes with a notice and a way to ask for review. An algorithmic demotion has neither.
Why manual action matters for SEO
A manual action can wipe out a site’s organic traffic overnight, and it stays until you fix the problem and Google accepts a reconsideration request. It is the clearest consequence of black hat SEO.
The upside is that it is specific. The report tells you the type and gives example URLs, so you know what to fix. Google is strict about scope, though: fixing only some affected pages does not earn a partial return.
How to check for a manual action
- Open Google Search Console for the property and go to Security & Manual Actions, then Manual actions.
- “No issues detected” means there is no manual action. Otherwise, expand each action to see its type, scope and sample URLs.
- Read Google’s description of that type and its fix steps.
- Fix the issue on every affected page, not just the samples, and make sure Google can crawl those pages.
- Click Request Review and explain what was wrong, what you changed and the result. See the penalty recovery guide for detail.
Is Google updating right now? Every confirmed core and spam update, with rollout dates and daily ranking volatility, is on the OpenSEO Google algorithm update tracker.
Manual action FAQ
How do I know if I have a Google penalty?
Check the Manual actions report in Search Console. If it is clear but traffic fell sharply around a spam or core update date, you may have an algorithmic demotion instead.
Do manual actions expire?
Google does not publish an expiry rule. The reliable way to lift one is to fix every instance of the problem and have a reconsideration request accepted.
Does a manual action affect the whole site?
Not always. The report shows whether it is site-wide or partial, and partial actions affect only the listed pages or sections.
Related SEO terms
A reconsideration request asks Google to review a site after you fix the issue behind a manual action, so the action can be lifted.
Google penalty recovery is the process of finding and fixing spam policy breaches so a site regains rankings after a manual action or demotion.
An algorithmic penalty is a ranking drop caused by Google’s automated systems, not a human reviewer, with no notice in Search Console.
Google’s spam policies list the practices that can get a site demoted or removed from Google Search, from cloaking and link spam to scaled content abuse.
Google Search Console is Google’s free tool that shows how your site performs in Google Search and flags indexing, security and spam problems.
Deindexing is when pages or a whole site are removed from a search engine’s index, so they no longer appear in results at all.