Manual Actions.
Learn what Manual Actions means in modern search and SEO.
Penalties applied by Google's human reviewers when a site violates Google's spam policies, reducing or removing rankings as a consequence.
A manual action (formerly called a manual penalty) is a ranking demotion or removal applied by a Google spam team reviewer after determining a site violates Google's spam policies. Unlike algorithmic penalties, which apply automatically, manual actions involve human judgement and are recorded in Google Search Console's Manual Actions report.
Common Manual Action Triggers
Frequent manual action triggers include: unnatural inbound links (paid link schemes, private blog networks), unnatural outbound links, thin or auto-generated content at scale, cloaking, sneaky redirects, structured data spam, hidden text, and user-generated spam (forum or comment spam on the site). Each trigger maps to a specific violation type in the GSC report.
Reconsideration Requests
After identifying and remedying the underlying issue (removing toxic links via disavow, deleting thin content, fixing cloaking), site owners submit a Reconsideration Request through Google Search Console explaining what was violated, what was done to fix it, and why the site now complies with policies. Google reviews the request and either lifts the manual action or provides additional guidance.
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