Manual Actions: Penalties and Reconsideration Requests

Short answer

A manual action is the one Google penalty with a human behind it and a notice in your hands. Google's Manual Actions help says it "issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies", and that affected sites are notified "in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center." Because it's specific, it's also fixable: you fix every affected page, explain what you did, and request a review. Algorithmic changes, by contrast, come with no notice; see spam updates.

Sources

1support.google.com

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Checking for a Manual Action

Open Search Console’s Manual actions report. Google says: “You’ll see a count of manual actions against your site at the top of the report. If your site has no manual actions, you’ll see a green check mark”. Expanding an action shows the affected URL patterns, which “can be a subset of your site, or the entire site.”

If you bought the site, Google addresses that case: “fix the issues listed in this report, then let us know in your reconsideration request that you recently acquired the site and that it now no longer violates the policies.”

The Types Google Lists

Manual action	What it concerns
Back button hijacking	Interfering with users' browser navigation and back button
Site abused with third-party spam	Spam posted on your site by visitors or other third parties
User-generated spam	Spam submitted by users, such as in forums and profiles
Spammy free host	A significant share of sites on a free hosting service are spammy
Structured data issue	Markup that doesn't match the content or breaks structured data policies
Unnatural links to your site	A pattern of manipulative links pointing to the site
Unnatural links from your site	A pattern of manipulative outbound links
Thin content with little or no added value	Pages without substantially unique or valuable content
Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects	Showing users and Google different content, or redirecting deceptively
Major spam problems	Aggressive techniques such as scaled content abuse or cloaking
Cloaked images	Serving Google different images from those visitors see
Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing	Content hidden from users or stuffed with keywords
AMP content mismatch	An AMP page that differs from its canonical page
Sneaky mobile redirects	Redirecting mobile users to content crawlers don't see
News and Discover policy violations	Content that violates Google News or Discover policies
Site reputation policy	Third-party content hosted mainly to benefit from the site's ranking signals

The policies behind them are Google’s spam policies, part of Google Search Essentials. Link actions are covered in link spam updates, and thin content in thin content identification.

Fixing the Problem

Google’s steps, from the same page:

Read the action and follow its “Learn more” link for the type’s detailed guidance.
See which pages are affected.
Fix every affected page. “Fixing the issue on just some pages will not earn you a partial return to search results. If you have multiple manual actions on your site, read about and fix all of them.”
Make sure Google can reach the pages: “affected pages should not require a login, be behind a paywall, or be blocked by robots.txt or a noindex directive.”
Then request review from the report.

What fixing means depends on the type. For unnatural links to your site, it means removing the links where you can and disavowing the rest; see toxic links and disavow. For outbound links, it means removing or qualifying them; see link schemes. For thin or scaled content, it means improving, consolidating or removing the pages. For user-generated or third-party spam, it means cleaning it out and adding moderation.

Writing the Reconsideration Request

Google says “A good request does three things”:

“Explains the exact quality issue on your site.”
“Describes the steps you’ve taken to fix the issue.”
“Documents the outcome of your efforts.”

In practice:

Name the problem plainly, including how it happened, such as a past vendor’s link building or an unmoderated forum.
List what you did: pages changed or removed, links removed, removal requests sent, links disavowed, moderation added.
Provide evidence: a spreadsheet of removal attempts, the disavow file, before-and-after examples.
Say how you’ll prevent it: policies, vendor controls, monitoring.

Write it as a factual account. A request that disputes the action without having fixed anything isn’t a reconsideration request.

After You Submit

Google says: “Most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, although in some cases, such as link-related reconsideration requests, it may take longer than usual to review your request.” You’ll get email confirmation, and Google asks you not to resubmit “before you get a final decision on your outstanding request.”

If the request is rejected, the remaining issues still need fixing; review the action’s guidance again, address what’s left, and submit again with the new evidence.

After the Action Is Lifted

A lifted manual action restores eligibility, not necessarily the previous rankings. Links that were removed or disavowed no longer count, and content that was removed is gone. Recovery from there is ordinary SEO work; see core updates and recovery for how to assess what’s left.

Preventing Manual Actions

Know what vendors do in your name, especially link building and content production.
Moderate user content and protect forms, comments and profiles from spam.
Qualify paid and sponsored links you publish.
Review third-party content you host, against the site reputation policy.
Check scripts that affect navigation or redirects, including ad code on mobile.
Watch Search Console for messages, manual actions and security issues; see the Google Search Console guide.

A reconsideration request is ready when every affected page is fixed, Google can reach those pages, and the request documents the problem, the fix and the outcome. If any affected page is still unfixed or blocked to Google, the request is early, whatever else it contains.