Manual Actions

A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google when a site breaks Google’s spam policies. It can lower the rankings of specific pages or remove a whole site from search results. Manual actions are shown in Google Search Console and can be lifted once the problem is fixed and reviewed.

Written by Paul Hoda, SEO consultant since 2005. Last updated 8 November 2026.

How manual actions work

Most spam is handled automatically by algorithms. Manual actions are different: a member of Google’s team reviews a site and confirms it breaks the spam policies.

Google then notifies the site owner through the Manual actions report in Google Search Console, usually with an email to verified owners as well.

An action can be site-wide or apply only to certain pages or sections. The report states which, along with the type of issue and, often, some example URLs.

Common types of manual action

  • Unnatural links to your site, such as paid links or link schemes.
  • Unnatural links from your site, for example selling links that pass ranking value.
  • Thin content with little or no added value, including scraped or automatically generated pages.
  • Pure spam: aggressive tactics such as gibberish, cloaking or large-scale scraping.
  • User-generated spam on forums, comments or profiles.
  • Cloaking and sneaky redirects.
  • Hidden text and keyword stuffing.
  • Structured data issues, where markup is misleading or breaks Google’s guidelines.
  • Site reputation abuse, where third-party content exploits the host site’s ranking signals.

Manual actions vs algorithmic drops

A manual action is not the same as a fall in rankings after an update. If traffic drops after a core update, there is no notice in Search Console and no review to request. Google’s advice in that case is to improve the overall quality of the site.

A manual action, by contrast, always appears in the report. If the report says no issues were detected, you do not have one. See Google penalties for the wider picture.

How to recover from a manual action

  1. Read the report carefully to see the issue type and the affected pages.
  2. Fix every instance of the problem across the site, not just the examples Google lists.
  3. For unnatural links, remove as many as you can and use the disavow tool for the rest.
  4. For thin content, improve, merge or remove the affected pages.
  5. Submit a reconsideration request explaining what went wrong, what you fixed and how you will prevent it happening again. Include evidence, such as a record of removed links.
  6. Wait for Google’s response, which can take days or weeks. If the request is rejected, fix the remaining issues and try again.

After the action is lifted

Rankings do not always return to their old level. If they were built on links or content that has now been removed, the site has less to support it than before. Lasting recovery comes from building genuine quality from that point on: useful content, earned links and a clean technical setup.

It is also worth checking the report again from time to time, since a new action can be applied if the same problems return.

Key Takeaways

  • A manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google.
  • It appears in the Manual actions report in Google Search Console.
  • Actions can affect specific pages or a whole site.
  • Fix every instance of the issue before submitting a reconsideration request.
  • Ranking drops after core updates are not manual actions.

Related Terms

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