Know About Google’s Manual Action and Penalties

Google Webmaster Tools inbox is like post box where alert messages are sent by Google for the site owner. If you have ever got such alert you must know about the same. Here is a brief overview of the matter that will help you understand better. There are two sections in the box: The first one where you may get the alert about site wide manual messages that the entire site has been penalized. Manual Penalty The second one is the partial manual section. If your site has some infected parts, you will be alerted here. In ‘Affects’ section you will find some specific links or URLs of the infected pages. In this concern the important matter is that you have not to be much worried after getting such partial manual alert and these messages will not affect on ranking. This can be said as Google has a special regards for you and you must remove the spammy links incoming to your site. This type of notification is essential to detect negative SEO efforts. History and Background The issue of such alert messages started on April 24, 2012. Later this over optimization penalty has been renamed as ‘penguin’. The updating of this algorithm had been targeted to reduce spammy links and manipulative linking in order to increase site’s search rankings. Quite prior to Penguin release Webmaster announced that it had got many such reports of unnatural links among which Google had whipped around 700,000 messages in January and February 2012. The initial reason of sending 700,000 messages is to remove automatically crated gibberish and cloaking while optimization process of a site. Among the 700,000 messages only 3% was for unnatural links and the rest was for obvious black hat spam. Besides this, Google had started to penalize the sites for violating webmaster guidelines. As Google was about to make an up-date of Penguin in 2013, the campaign started again. This was the second round of warning messages that were exclusively targeted on unnatural links. In August 2013, Google announced about the ‘manual section’ of webmaster tools. This was made to inform the site owners about the penalty and what the reasons were responsible for the operation. No9w if you have GWMT you have timely notifications both on GWMT inbox and desktop, if your site will about to be penalized. Certain Reasons for Manual Actions : According to Goggle, there are 10 guidelines listed and violating those you may get messages for manual action. You have to determine which guidelines(s) you have violated. Have a look:-  Unnatural Links Partially: - If Google has found unnatural or spammy links specifically.  Unnaturally Links as a Whole: - If Google has found such spammy links which may impact over the site as a whole.  User Generated Spam: - If spammy links are found on blog or forum comments or posts.  Hacked Site: - If Google has found your site is hacked by a third party.  Spammy free hosts: - When Google will find a majority of sites are spammy and entire network will be penalized.  Thin Content: - If your site has thin and low quality content without proper description.  Spammy Redirects: - If Google finds that you are showing one page to the users and another to the search engine.  Keyword Stuffing: - If you have keyword stuffing on your site.  Pure Spam:- If your site uses several spam techniques, it will be under threat. How to Recover from Manual Penalty : If you have received the threat first try to determine the reason of the manual action. To operate the same you need a strong review of your site. There may be different issues like link related problem or content related problem. It will be best to adopt a professional site audit. After you have resolved the issue, you have to make a reconsideration request to Google via webmaster tools. Google will never consider you for false claims. In the manual section of webmaster tools you have to put all the detail about your resolving process. The major points will be like:-

i. What steps you have taken to solve the issue. ii. Why the issue had been created. iii. What steps and measures have you made to ensure that it will not reoccur in future? How Long it will take for Back Response? Earlier in 2012 it used to take around two months to receive a response, but now the process has become quite faster that the reply response can be read within few days or a week. If there is a backlog of requests it may take two weeks. But the question is what will be the response? Here I have structured few responses that will help guide in the matter. First, if you have not got any response after two weeks or a month, wht you should do. You have to resubmit the request. Even if you have not got any email conversation after the submission of your request you have to do the same. Now what the responses may be:- i. Your reconsideration request has been granted and the spammy reasons have been resolved. ii. Your reconsideration request has been denied and you have to give more effort to remove penalty. iii. Your request has been processed and that means your site have several issues and the processing still continues. iv. There are no manual actions against your site. No manual spam action has been found. From my experience I can say that you will not get a satisfactory result on the first attempt. It generally takes three or four attempts of reconsideration request to get Google’s response. Actually, Google wants to find out who really care about their brand and online reputation. If your site has several issues, then it will take more time for consideration. This is done due to incoming links. Basically some incoming links partial action is not a site penalty. If you have submitted a disavow tool without reconsideration request then the response will be like this “unnatural links to your site.” From this response we come to know about the fact that Google has the acknowledgement of the fact. Moreover Google deserves from the webmasters to clean the spammy links in a continuous process. What Should You Do If Your Rank Is Not Recovered? It is truly a matter of time and efforts to get a relief from a penalty. Repeated consideration request can make you complicated and you will find that your SERP ranking has not been recovered. This holds often due to spammy links. You may at the top for a certain time due to some incoming spammy links and now the links are deleted. So there will be an effect on ranking. So, you must not be worried in link related penalty. Now you have released from penalty. If you are threatened by Google panda or algorithm you have to keep patience until Google makes a refresh operation. So, these are all about Google’s manual action and penalties. Make sure that you will come out from the threat and also can regain your lost ranking. Do not forget to leave responses. All the best.

About the Author: Anirban Das

By Professional qualification a Computer Engineer, By Profession an Online Marketing Strategist and Web Application Development Expert, By Industry position working as a CEO at Zebra Techies Solution!

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