Manual Actions in Search Console and How to Recover

A manual action is a penalty applied by a person at Google after a reviewer decides that pages on your website break Google’s spam policies. It can push some or all of those pages down the rankings or out of the results altogether. Google lists unnatural links pointing to a website and unnatural links pointing out from it among its manual action types, so recovering from a link action draws on the same skills as off-page SEO for B2B organisations.

The good news is that a manual action comes with a clear route back. Search Console names the violation, shows which pages are affected and gives you a way to ask for a review once the problem is fixed, which is more than any algorithmic ranking drop offers.

What a Manual Action Means for Your Website

A manual action means a human reviewer at Google has looked at your website and found pages that do not comply with Google’s spam policies for web search. Those policies cover practices such as cloaking, doorway abuse, link spam, scaled content abuse, hidden text and keyword stuffing. They apply to every page that wants to appear in Google web search, whatever the size of the organisation behind it.

Google finds spam through automated systems as well as through human review, so a manual action is a deliberate decision by a person rather than the side effect of a ranking update. The difference matters because an algorithmic drop has no report entry and no review process, while a manual action has both.

The effect ranges from a handful of pages ranking lower to a whole website disappearing from the results. Google does not show searchers any sign that a page has been penalised, so the first visible symptom is often a fall in impressions and clicks for the affected pages.

How to Check Whether Your Website Has a Manual Action

You can check for a manual action by opening the Manual actions report under the Security and manual actions menu in Google Search Console. If nothing has been applied to the property, the report shows a green tick with a message saying no issues were detected. Any action that has been applied appears in the report as well as in the Search Console message centre.

Each entry names the violation and lists patterns of affected pages, such as every URL under one directory. An entry marked as affecting all pages applies to the entire website, which changes the scale of the clean up considerably.

Traffic drops without a report entry have other causes. Google’s guide to debugging drops in Search traffic covers the alternatives, including algorithmic updates, technical issues, security issues and seasonal changes in demand. Our guide to why a Google ranking suddenly dropped works through those causes in order.

Hacked content is reported separately in the Security issues report, which covers malware, social engineering and content placed on a website without the owner’s permission. A hacked website can still pick up a manual action, for example when injected scripts send mobile visitors to spam pages, so check both reports and follow our guide to fixing a hacked WordPress website if the security report shows a problem.

The Types of Manual Action Google Issues

Google issues manual actions for a defined list of violations, each one tied to a spam policy and published with its own recovery steps in the Manual actions report documentation. The table below summarises the actions a business website is most likely to meet and what each one asks you to do.

The full list also includes AMP content mismatch, cloaked images, sneaky mobile redirects, spammy free hosts, back button hijacking and a group of News and Discover policy violations that mainly concern publishers. Google notes that the reputation abuse action does not apply to search results shown in the European Economic Area. The UK sits outside that area, so the action still applies to results shown to UK searchers.

Several of these actions can be triggered by people other than the website owner. Spam posted in comments or forums, scripts added by an advertising partner and pages injected by attackers all appear in Google’s descriptions, so a manual action is not always evidence that someone in the business tried to game the rankings.

How to Fix an Unnatural Links Manual Action

Fixing an unnatural links action means removing the artificial links where you can, disavowing the ones you cannot remove and documenting both. The link spam policy covers bought links, excessive link exchanges, automated link building and advertorials that pass ranking credit, so the work starts with a full list of the links pointing at the website.

The Links report in Search Console lets you export external links, including the most recently discovered ones, as a CSV file or a Google Sheet. Google suggests starting with the domains that link to you most and with links created in recent months when the list is large. Our guide to reading your backlink profile covers how to judge link diversity, authority and anchor text patterns.

For each artificial link, ask the owner of the linking website to remove it or to qualify it so it no longer passes PageRank. Anything that cannot be removed goes into a disavow file through the Disavow links tool, which Google describes as an advanced feature that can harm performance in search if it is used incorrectly.

Google’s guidance on the disavow file is specific about how it should be built. The points below come from that guidance and from the manual action documentation.

• Make a good faith effort to remove each link before disavowing it, because a file that lists every backlink without any removal attempts is not enough for a successful request
• Use the domain: prefix to disavow every link from one domain in a single line
• Keep organic links out of the file, since disavowing them throws away value the website earned on merit
• Upload the file as a property owner, bearing in mind that a new list replaces the existing one for that property

Once the artificial links are removed or disavowed, request a review with documentation of the links taken down and an explanation of any that could not be removed. A rejected request is a signal that the reviewer still found problems, so widen the audit rather than resubmitting the same evidence.

The outbound version of the action is fixed on your own pages. Remove links that were paid for or exchanged, or mark them with the sponsored or nofollow values described in Google’s guidance on qualifying outbound links, then give examples of what changed when you request a review.

How to Fix Content, Cloaking and Markup Actions

Content and technical actions are fixed by removing the practice from every affected page, because Google states that fixing only some pages will not earn a partial return to search results. If the report lists more than one action, each one needs fixing before a review is requested.

For thin content, check for pages that copy content from elsewhere, thin affiliate pages and doorway pages, then decide whether each one adds real value for visitors. Pages that do not should be improved substantially or removed. The request should then give examples of content taken down alongside content added.

Cloaking and sneaky redirect actions need a close look at the code. Use the URL Inspection tool to compare what Google fetches with what a visitor sees, then check JavaScript, the .htaccess file, the content management system and any plugins for redirects that only fire for certain visitors.

Hidden text and keyword stuffing are found in a similar way. Look for text in the same colour as the background, text hidden with CSS and strings of repeated words in title tags or alt text, then remove or restyle it so crawlers and visitors see the same content.

Structured data actions are resolved by bringing markup back in line with what the page shows, such as removing review markup written by the business itself or job posting markup on pages that do not offer a job. Problems like these often sit alongside wider crawling and markup issues of the kind that technical SEO services are designed to find.

How to Write a Reconsideration Request

A reconsideration request should explain the exact issue, describe the steps taken to fix it and document the outcome, which are the three things Google says a good request does. It is submitted with the Request Review button in the Manual actions report once every listed issue has been fixed on every affected page.

Affected pages must be reachable by Google, so they should not sit behind a login or a paywall or be blocked by robots.txt or a noindex rule. If you bought the website with the action already in place, Google asks you to say so in the request and to confirm that it no longer breaks the policies.

Honest and specific requests give the reviewer what they need to lift the action. A request that acknowledges what went wrong and shows the clean up in detail is easier to approve than one that plays the problem down or blames an unnamed former supplier.

Write the request for someone who has never seen the website before. Plain descriptions of what was found, what was done and where the evidence sits are more useful to a reviewer than general promises about future behaviour.

How Long Recovery Takes and What It Restores

Google says most reconsideration reviews take several days or weeks, although link related requests can take longer than usual. You receive an email when the request is received and another when the review is complete, so there is no need to chase or resubmit while you wait.

Lifting the action removes the suppression, but it does not restore any ranking benefit the artificial links or thin pages were providing. A website that relied on bought links will settle at the level its remaining links and content support, which can sit below its position before the penalty.

Rankings also take time to settle after any significant fix, as Google confirmed when it said ranking recovery can take months after SEO fixes. Plan reporting around that timescale rather than expecting traffic to return in the week the action is revoked.

How to Keep Your Website Out of the Manual Actions Report

Keeping a website out of the report comes down to avoiding the shortcuts the spam policies describe and watching the areas where other people can add content. Do not buy links, join link exchanges or accept placements that promise ranking credit, because those links are exactly what the link spam policy targets.

Comment sections, forums and profile pages need moderation, a list of blocked spam terms and the ugc value on links posted by visitors. Scripts from advertising partners deserve the same scrutiny, since Google names advertising scripts as one cause of sneaky mobile redirects.

Security is the other half of prevention, because attackers inject the spam pages and redirects that lead to security warnings and manual actions alike. Scheduled updates, malware monitoring and backups through WordPress maintenance and security services reduce that exposure. Checking the Manual actions report during routine Search Console reviews then means any action is spotted early.