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
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.
Some pages on this site appear to be redirecting mobile device users to content not available to search engine crawlers. These sneaky redirects are a violation of Google spam policies. To ensure quality search results for our users, the Google Search Quality team can take action on such sites, including removal of URLs from our index.
Overview
In many cases, it is okay to show slightly different content on different devices. For example, optimizing for the smaller space of a smartphone screen can mean that some content, like images, need to be modified. Similarly, for mobile-only redirects, redirecting mobile users to improve their mobile experience (like redirecting mobile users from example.com/url1 to m.example.com/url1) is often beneficial to them. However, redirecting mobile users sneakily to different content is bad for the user experience.
Sneaky mobile redirects can be created intentionally by a site owner, but we've also seen situations where mobile-only sneaky redirects happen without the site owner's knowledge. The following are examples of configurations that can cause sneaky mobile redirects:
- Adding code that creates redirection rules for mobile users
- Using a script or element to display ads and monetize content that redirect mobile users
- A script or element added by hackers that redirects your mobile users to malicious sites
Recommended actions
- If you are not engaging in this behavior intentionally:
- Make sure that your site is not hacked
Check the Security Issues report to see if Google thinks you have been hacked.
- Audit third-party scripts/elements on your site
If your site is not hacked, then we recommend that you take the time to investigate if third-party scripts or elements are causing the redirects. You can follow these steps:
- Remove any third-party scripts or elements you do not control from the redirecting page(s) one by one.
- After removing each script or element, check your site behavior on a mobile device or in Chrome mobile emulator (or any other emulator) to see if the redirection stops.
- If you think a particular script or element is responsible for the sneaky redirect, consider removing it from your site and possibly debugging the issue with the script or element provider.
- Make sure that your site is not hacked
- If you are engaging in this behavior intentionally:
Fix your pages. - Confirm your fix by visiting your pages from Google search results with a smartphone or in a mobile device emulator.
- When the issue is fixed on all pages in your site, 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.
Avoiding sneaky mobile redirects in the future
To diminish the risk of unknowingly redirecting your own users, be sure to choose advertisers who are transparent on how they handle user traffic. If you are interested in building trust in the online advertising space, you should research industry-wide best practices when participating in ad networks. For example, the Trustworthy Accountability Group's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Inventory Quality Guidelines are a good place to start. There are many ways to monetize your content with mobile solutions that provide a high quality user experience. Be sure to use them.
To check for sneaky mobile redirects on your site, walk through the following steps:
- Check if you are redirected when you navigate to your site on your smartphone
We recommend you check the mobile user experience of your site by visiting your pages from Google search results with a smartphone. When debugging, mobile emulation in desktop browsers is handy because you can test for many different devices. You can, for example, view pages as a mobile device straight from your browser in Chrome, Firefox or Safari (for the latter, make sure you have enabled the "Show Develop menu in menu bar” feature).
- Listen to your users
Your users can see your site in different ways than you. It's always important to pay attention to user complaints, so you can hear of any issue related to the mobile user experience.
- Monitor your mobile users in your site's analytics data
Unusual mobile user activity can be detected by looking at some of the data in your website's analytics data. For example, keep an eye on the average time spent on your site by your mobile users: if all of a sudden, only your mobile users start spending much less time on your site than they used to, there might be an issue related to mobile redirections.
Monitoring for any large changes in your mobile user activity can help you proactively identify sneaky mobile redirects. You can set up Google Analytics alerts that will warn you of sharp drops in average time spent on your site by mobile users or drops in mobile users. While these alerts do not necessarily mean that you have mobile sneaky redirects, it's something worth investigating.
What's the difference between the Manual Actions report and the Security Issues report?
There is some conceptual overlap between the Manual Actions report and the Security Issues report, so it is useful to know the difference between them:
The Manual Actions report lists manually detected issues with a page or site that are mostly attempts to manipulate our search index, but are not necessarily dangerous for users. Most issues reported here will result in pages or site being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.
The Security Issues report lists indications that your site was hacked, or behavior on your site that could potentially harm a visitor or their computer: for example, phishing attacks or installing malware or unwanted software on the user's computer. These pages can appear with a warning label in search results, or a browser can display an interstitial warning page when a user tries to visit them.