Google Manual Actions: Types, Causes, Reconsideration

A Google manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer when a site breaks Google’s spam policies, and it can stop some or all of your site appearing in results. Check the Manual Actions report in Search Console, fix every affected page, then submit a reconsideration request explaining the problem, your fixes and the outcome.

A Backlinko correlation study of 11.8 million Google results found the number 1 result has three times more referring domains than positions 2 to 10, though the authors say a correlation study cannot show causation, which is one reason link schemes remain tempting and policed.

Few messages in Search Console cause as much alarm as a manual action notice. The good news is that it is also one of the clearest problems you can have, because Google tells you what it found and gives you a route back. This guide explains what a manual action is, how it differs from an algorithmic drop, the main policy areas behind them, and how to write a reconsideration request that works.

What a manual action is, and how to check for one

Google’s help page for the Manual Actions report states that if a site has a manual action, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results. Google issues them when a human reviewer decides pages violate its spam policies. The report shows the type of violation and, usually, the affected pages or patterns.

To check, open Search Console for the right property and look at the Manual Actions report. “No issues detected” means no manual action is recorded. If there is one, you will also normally receive a message to the verified owners, so make sure the right email address is attached to the property. If you do not have Search Console set up for your site, fix that first, because you cannot see or answer a manual action without it.

Manual action or algorithmic drop?

Many site owners assume any traffic fall is a penalty. It rarely is. I always separate the two before anything else, because the remedies are different.

Question	Manual action	Algorithmic change or other cause
Who decides?	A human reviewer at Google	Automated systems, updates, competitors, seasonality or your own changes
Where do you see it?	Manual Actions report and a message in Search Console	No notice; you diagnose from data
How do you fix it?	Fix the violation, then request a review	Improve the site; there is no request to submit
How is it resolved?	Google reviews and revokes the action	Gradual change as systems reassess

If the report is empty and traffic has dropped, you are in diagnostic territory. Look at indexing, technical changes, tracking breakage and competitors, and for a structured way to do it use my guide to HTTP status codes alongside a changes log, because a bad redirect or a wave of server errors often explains what looks like a penalty.

Rather have an expert do this for you?

Hand it over and get back to running your business.

Hand it over to me

Main causes of manual actions

Google’s spam policies explain that sites violating them may rank lower or not appear at all, and that violations can lead to a manual action. The policy names below are the areas I see discussed most. I have summarised them in my own words, so check Google’s page for exact definitions before acting.

Policy area	What it covers in plain terms	Typical sign
Link spam	Creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate rankings	Paid links, link exchanges, mass directory or comment links
Cloaking	Showing search engines different content from users	Pages that look different to Googlebot and to visitors
Sneaky redirects	Redirecting in order to show users different content from search engines, or unexpected content	Visitors from search land on a page they did not expect
Hacked content	Content placed on a site without permission through security vulnerabilities	Spam pages or injected links you did not add
Hidden text and link abuse, keyword stuffing	Content not meant for human readers, or filling pages with keywords	Text matching the background, off-screen blocks, repeated keyword lists
Thin affiliation	Affiliate pages with copied merchant descriptions and nothing original	Product pages identical to the supplier’s feed
User-generated spam	Spam added by users through comments, forums or profiles	Spammy comments and unmoderated posts
Scaled content abuse	Producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, not help users	Mass-generated pages with little unique value
Site reputation abuse and expired domain abuse	Hosting third-party content to exploit a host’s ranking signals, or reusing expired domains to manipulate results	Unrelated sections or old domains repurposed for rankings

Some of these overlap with other problems. Hacking is covered in hacked website recovery for SEO, and a redirect used deceptively is different from a normal redirect, which you can learn to handle in redirect chains and loops.

How to fix a manual action

Read the notice fully. Expand the description in the report and open its “learn more” guidance. Note which pages or patterns are named.
Fix the problem throughout the site. Google’s help page is clear that all affected pages need to be fixed; a partial fix will not work. Look beyond the example URLs for the same pattern elsewhere.
Make sure Google can see the fix. The pages must be accessible without a login or paywall and must not be blocked by robots.txt. If you have blocked them, review my robots.txt guide and open them up.
Document everything. Keep a list of what was wrong, what changed and when, with before and after evidence, such as removed links or deleted pages.
Submit a reconsideration request only when every item is done.

For link-related actions, the work is practical: identify the links you created or paid for, and ask for them to be removed where you can. If you inherited the problem from an old agency, say so, but still show the clean-up. For user-generated spam, tighten moderation and remove the junk. For thin or scaled content, improve or remove the pages, and do not simply rephrase them.

How to write a reconsideration request

The same help page says a good request does three things: it explains the exact quality issue on your site, describes the steps you took to fix it, and documents the outcome of your efforts. That is a better template than any clever wording. Keep it short, factual and honest. Do not argue, blame Google, or promise it will never happen again.

Here is an illustrative example for a made-up business, not a real submission. Imagine a Karachi furniture store that had paid for links:

Issue: Between 2023 and 2024 we bought links from 42 blogs to improve rankings. Steps: We exported all links, contacted every site owner and removed 31 links; the remaining 11 could not be removed and are listed in the attached sheet. We also ended our contract with the provider and set a policy that no links are bought. Outcome: Paid links are no longer present, and our link acquisition is now limited to content we publish and press coverage.

Notice the structure. It names the issue, lists the actions and states the result, with evidence attached.

Timelines, expectations and what happens next

Google says most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, and sometimes longer, especially for link-related requests. You will be emailed when the request is received and again when it is decided. Do not resubmit before a decision, because that does not speed things up. If the request is rejected, read the response, find what you missed and test again before submitting a new request.

When the action is revoked, the penalty ends but I would not promise a return to old traffic. Pages that ranked because of the manipulative tactic will not come back, and the site may need genuine improvement to earn visibility. Look at the content, links and technical health, and use the WordPress technical SEO checklist to find any underlying weaknesses.

Preventing the next manual action

Do not buy or exchange links to influence rankings, and brief any agency in writing that you will not accept such tactics.
Moderate comments, forums and profiles, and use spam filters.
Keep software updated and monitor for hacking through the Security Issues report and server alerts.
Review any redirect rules, third-party scripts or plugins that change what visitors or crawlers see.
Publish content that helps readers, and avoid mass-producing pages for the sake of volume.
Keep Search Console notifications going to a mailbox somebody actually reads.

Keep a simple log of every change you make to links, content and redirects, with dates. It makes a reconsideration request easier to write, and it is the first thing I would want to see if rankings move for reasons that have nothing to do with a penalty.

Questions about Google manual actions

How do I know if I have a manual action?

Open the Manual Actions report in Search Console for your property. If one exists, it describes the issue and affected pages. No notice means no recorded manual action, and a traffic drop has another cause.

How long does a reconsideration request take?

Google describes it as several days or weeks in most cases, sometimes longer. Do not resubmit while one is pending.

Can I recover my rankings after a manual action is lifted?

The block ends, but results are not guaranteed. If rankings were built on the tactic that triggered the action, they will not simply return, so plan to earn them honestly.

Is a Google core update the same as a penalty?

No. A manual action is a human decision shown in Search Console, while an algorithmic change is automated and has no notice or review process.

If you have received a notice or suspect a policy problem, request a free audit and I will review the evidence and the recovery steps. Policy and crawl problems like these are part of my technical SEO services.

More in this series (Technical SEO in depth): start with WordPress Technical SEO Checklist: What to Fix First, then explore: