See if your site has any manual actions issued against it and view the site's manual action history.
If a site has a manual action, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results.
Open the Manual actions report
Manual Actions report in Search Console - Google Search Console Training
What is a manual action?
Google 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. Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index. Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.
If your site is affected by a manual action, we will notify you in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center.
Why do manual actions exist?
Ever since there have been search engines, there have been people dedicated to tricking their way to the top of the results page. This is bad for searchers because more relevant pages get buried under irrelevant results, and it's bad for legitimate websites because these sites become harder to find. For these reasons, we've been working since the earliest days of Google to fight spammers, helping people find the answers they're looking for, and helping legitimate websites get traffic from search.
Google is constantly working to improve search. We take a data-driven approach and employ analysts, researchers, and statisticians to evaluate search quality on a full-time basis. Changes to our algorithms undergo extensive quality evaluation before being released. More information about our algorithm.
Our algorithms are extremely good at detecting spam, and in most cases we automatically discover it and remove it from our search results. However, to protect the quality of our index, we're also willing to take manual action to remove spam from our search results.
Do I have any manual actions against my site?
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 and an appropriate message.
If you recently bought a site that violated our spam policies before you owned it, 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.
What pages are affected?
Expand the manual action description to see a list of patterns of affected pages. This can be a subset of your site, or the entire site. Not all of the pages matching the pattern are necessarily affected.
Example:
https://example.com/real-estate/*– some or all pages under thereal-estate/directory are affected.- Affects all pages – Manual actions with this description affect the entire site.
How do I fix the problem?
To fix a manual action on your site:
- Expand the manual action description panel on the report for more information.
- See which pages are affected.
- See the type and short description of the issue, and follow the "Learn more" link to see detailed information and steps to fix the issue. (You can find the detailed information for each action below on this page).
- Fix the issue on all affected pages. 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.
- Be sure that Google can reach your pages; affected pages should not require a login, be behind a paywall, or be blocked by robots.txt or a noindex directive. You can test accessibility by using the URL Inspection tool.
- When all issues listed in the report are fixed in all pages, select Request Review in this report. In your reconsideration request, describe your fixes. 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.
- Reconsideration reviews can take some time (see below). You will be informed of progress by email. You will get a review confirmation message when you send your request, to inform you that the review is in progress; don't resubmit your request before you get a final decision on your outstanding request.
How long will my reconsideration review take?
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 will be informed by email when we receive your request, so you'll know it is active. You will also receive an email when the review is complete. Please don't resubmit your request before you get a decision on any outstanding requests.
List of manual actions
Here are the manual actions that can be applied by Google and how to fix them.
Back button hijacking
Google has detected that a portion of your site may exhibit back button hijacking behavior, which violates our spam policy on malicious practices.
Back button hijacking is when a site interferes with the user's browser navigation by manipulating the browser history or other functionalities, preventing them from using their back button to immediately get back to the page they came from.
The current manual action affects pages with content that violates our policy. If your site repeatedly violates our back button hijack policy, this may lead to further manual actions and affect your site’s overall ranking.
Recommended actions:
Review Google’s spam policy on malicious practices, then follow these steps to identify and correct the violation(s) on your site:
- Disable or remove any code or imports that are responsible for back button hijacking.
- Click Request review in the Manual actions report once you're sure your site is no longer violating our spam policies.
- Watch for review status messages in your Search Console account—we’ll let you know when we’ve reviewed your site. If we determine that your site is no longer violating our spam policies, we’ll revoke the manual action.
Recommended actions
Review Google's Spam policies on user-generated spam, documentation on preventing comment spam and free host spam, and how to fix hacked pages, then follow these steps to identify and correct the violation(s) on your site:
- Identify pages on your site where users, visitors, or other third-parties could add content or interact with: these could be your forums, guestbooks, social media platforms, file uploader, free hosting services, or internal search pages that users can send queries to.
- Review the example URLs in the messages you received in the Search Console Messages center or by email to gain a better sense of where the spammy content appears. In addition, please search your site for unexpected or spammy content using the "site:" operator in Google search, adding commercial or adult keywords that are unrelated to your site's topic. For example, search for [site:your-domain-name viagra] or [site:your-domain-name free movie watch online] to detect the irrelevant content on your site. Search for things such as:
- Out-of-context text or off-topic links with the sole purpose of promoting a third-party website or service (for example, "Free movie download" or "watch online”)
- Gibberish or text that appears to be auto-generated
- Comments or information submitted by users with unrealistic, commercial-sounding keywords; that is, user names like "Discount Insurance" that don't sound like real usernames and link to unrelated sites
- Internal search results where the user's query appears geared at promoting a third-party website or service
- Monitor your web server log files for sudden unexpected or unexplained traffic spikes, especially for newly created pages. Look for any URLs with keywords in URL patterns that are completely irrelevant to your website. You can see your top clicked pages in Google Search by using the Performance report for Search.
- Remove any inappropriate content and block obviously inappropriate third-party content from being published to your platform with a list of spammy terms (such as streaming, download, adult, gambling, or pharma terms).
- Where appropriate, use these guides:
- Consider consolidating your interactive content into a concentrated file path for easier maintenance and spam detection.
- When you're sure that your site is no longer in violation of our spam policies, select Request Review on the Manual Actions report.
- After you've submitted a reconsideration request, be patient and watch for review status messages in your Search Console account — we'll let you know when we've reviewed your site. If we determine that your site is no longer in violation of our spam policies, we'll revoke the manual action.
- In the meanwhile, it is also recommended to continue actively monitoring and cleaning up such spammy content, improve your site's system and fix system vulnerability to prevent such spam in the future.