﻿Hi, I'm Daniel Waisberg, Search Advocate at Google.
Today, I'll talk about how to use Search Console to check
if your site has any Google Search manual actions issued against it.
This is important because if a site has a manual action,
some or all of that site might not be shown in Google Search results.
By the end of this video, you should be able to find out
if your website has any pages affected by manual actions,
and if so, how to fix them and request Google to review your changes.
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Google is constantly working to improve Search.
That's why changes to our algorithms
undergo extensive quality evaluation before being released.
The algorithms are extremely good at detecting spam,
and in most cases, they automatically clean it up from search results.
To further improve search results quality,
Google also scans sites
for cases where its policy and guidelines are not kept.
In these cases, a human might review a website and apply a manual action.
Following the application of a manual action,
relevant pages or entire websites may be ranked lower
or completely omitted from search results.
There are quite a few manual action types
that you might see in Search Console.
So, I won't go over all of them,
but here are some of the most common ones.
For a comprehensive list,
visit the Help Center article link from the description.
Pure spam stands for what webmasters usually call Black Hat SEO.
It includes complex techniques,
such as hosting auto-generated gibberish pages,
cloaking, scraping, and other shady practices.
Thin content with little or no added value
is issued to websites that appear
to contain a significant percentage of low-quality or shallow pages
that do not provide users with much added value.
Structured data issues are applied to websites
where some of the markup is using techniques
that are outside our structured data guidelines.
For example, marking up content that is invisible to users,
marking up irrelevant or misleading content,
or other manipulative behavior.
If your site is affected by a manual action,
you'll receive an email notification from Search Console to alert you.
Click the link provided in the message
to visit the Manual Actions report in Search Console.
Even if you miss an email,
you can always log in to Search Console to check if you have any issues.
In the Overview page,
you'll already be notified if you have manual actions on your site.
Click the alert to find the list of all manual actions
issued against your site
and more information about them.
You can also navigate to the Messages panel
to see all manual action messages
that have been sent to your website in the past.
This might give you context on your website history,
especially if you're new to a company or took over an existing website.
Here's how to fix a manual action on your site.
Expand the manual action description panel on the report
to learn more about the issue
and, in some cases, to review a sample of pages affected.
Follow the Learn More link to see detailed information
and steps to fix the issue.
Fix the issue on all affected pages.
Fixing it on just some pages will not solve the problem.
So, make sure you leave no pages behind.
When you believe all issues listed in the report have been fixed
or not applicable, click Request Review.
A good request does three things:
It explains the exact quality issue on your site,
it describes the steps you've taken to fix the issue,
and it documents the outcome of your efforts.
You'll get a review confirmation message when you send your request
and another one when Google reviews it
and accepts or rejects your request.
No need to resubmit your request
before you get the final decision on your outstanding request.
If you recently bought a site
that violated our guidelines before you owned it,
fix the issues listed in this report,
then let us know in your review request
that you recently acquired the site
and that it now adheres to the guidelines.
Don't just remove the old bad content.
Be sure to add your new good content before requesting a review.
Now that I discussed both Security Issues and Manual Actions reports
in this series,
I thought I would clarify the difference between them
because there is some conceptual overlap.
The Manual Actions report lists manually detected issues
that are mostly attempts to manipulate Google Search index
but are not necessarily dangerous for users.
As a result, most manual actions reported here
will result in a group of pages or the entire site to rank lower
or drop from search results
without any visual indication to the user on Search.
The Security Issues report shows instances where your site was hacked
or behavior in your site that could potentially harm a visitor.
For example, phishing attacks
or installing malware 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.
I hope that helps clarifying the subject.
That's all for today.
I hope you have a better understanding of what are manual actions,
how to fix them with the help of Search Console,
and how to request Google to review pages you have fixed.
Don't forget to subscribe
to the Google Webmasters channel on YouTube
to watch many more Search Console videos.
Stay tuned.
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