Google spam policies
Google's documented list of behaviours that can cause lower rankings or removal, covering cloaking, doorways, hacked content, keyword…
AlgorithmsManual penalty
Manual action
A demotion or removal applied by a human reviewer at Google for a spam policy violation, reported in Search Console with a reconsideration process.
In full
Manual actions are distinct from algorithmic effects: they are notified, they specify the violation and whether it is site-wide or partial, and they are lifted only after a successful reconsideration request. Common types include unnatural links to and from a site, thin content with little added value, user-generated spam, cloaking, structured data issues and site reputation abuse. A reconsideration request must document what was wrong, what was fixed and how recurrence will be prevented.
Example
A site receives a 'Site reputation abuse' manual action affecting one subdirectory, which stops appearing in results while the rest of the site is unaffected.
Related terms
Site reputation abuse
Publishing third-party content on a host site to exploit that site's ranking signals; a Google spam policy violation regardless of…
Link spam
Google's spam policy category covering links intended to manipulate rankings: buying or selling links, excessive exchanges, automated link…
Disavow links tool
A Search Console tool for asking Google to ignore specified inbound links or domains, intended for sites with a link-related manual action…
Google Search Console
Google's free property-level reporting and diagnostics service covering search performance, indexing status, enhancements, manual actions…
Where to read more
- Debug Google Search Traffic Drops · Documentation · developers.google.com
- Google Search Console Help Center · Documentation · support.google.com