A day after Google announced new search spam policies with March 2024 spam and core updates, the company began penalizing websites the search company found to be violating those spam policies.
As a result of these search penalties, some sites have been completely or partially removed from Google's search results, erasing all or part of their search traffic.
These sites also received notifications about these penalties in the manual action section within Google Search Console.
manual action. Google explains: “If Google's human reviewers determine that a page on your site does not comply with Google's spam policies, Google will take manual action against your site. Most manual actions will Address attempts to manipulate. Most of the issues reported here result in pages and sites being ranked lower or excluded from search results without any visual indication to the user. .”
example. Google has a number of manual measures in place to combat pure spam. According to the violation document, these pure spam activities include “pages on this site that contain automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping of content from other websites, and/or web search related content. “Appears to be using aggressive spam techniques, including repeated or significant violations of Google's spam policies.” I notice.
This is one of many screenshots posted around the web.
Some people have reported receiving manual responses for “misleading content.” Google responded to this violation by saying, “Your site appears to be in violation of its misleading content policy, misleading users into visiting your site by promising details that are not reflected in the content.'' “It has said.
I posted dozens of examples of these complaints on Search Engine Roundtable.
Manual actions and algorithm updates. It's important to note that manual operations are performed by humans at Google. A human reviews the site and determines that the site violates our spam policy. Although Google may automate some of the processes for discovering these violations, they are considered “manual” by Google.
Algorithm updates such as the March 2024 core update and spam updates will not result in ranking drop notifications through the Google Search Console manual action viewer. Algorithm updates are automated, and Google does not notify site owners if their site is negatively (or positively) affected by an algorithm update. Of course, your site can be affected by both manual actions and algorithm updates.
How to fix your site after manual action. If you receive a manual action, it means you can take steps to correct the violation and remove the manual action. According to Google, here are the steps you can take:
- For more information, expand the manual action description panel on the report.
- See which pages are affected.
- Check the problem type and short description, then click the “Learn more” link for more information and steps to resolve the problem. (Detailed information for each action is at the bottom of this page).
- Please fix the problem All affected pages. Fixing an issue on only a few pages will not allow you to partially return to search results. If your site has multiple manual actions, read and fix them all.
- Make sure Google can access your page. Affected pages cannot require login, be behind a paywall, or be blocked by robots.txt or noindex directives. You can test accessibility using URL inspection tools.
- when all problems The contents of the report will be amended as follows: all pagesselect Request a review In this report. Please include the correction details in your reexamination request. A good request does three things:
- Accurately describe any quality issues on your site.
- Describe the steps you took to resolve the issue.
- Document the results of your efforts.
- Reconsideration reviews may take some time (see below). We will notify you of the progress via email. Once you submit your request, you will receive a review confirmation message letting you know that a review is in progress. Please do not resubmit your request until we have a final decision on your outstanding request.
How long does it take. Google says, “Most reconsiderations can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but in some cases, such as link-related reconsideration requests, we may take longer than usual to review your request.” Masu.
Google added that you'll know your request is valid because you'll be notified via email when it receives your request. You will also receive an email once the review is complete.
why do we care? We recommend checking your site's manual actions viewer to see if there are any manual actions. If so, you may notice a significant drop in traffic and your site being excluded from Google search.
If you have been attacked, you must decide what steps to take to recover and go through the reconsideration request process.
Please note that core and spam updates are different from manual actions and take 2-4 weeks to fully deploy.