The Complete List of Google Penalties - Manual Actions Guide

Google applies various penalties to websites that do not follow its guidelines. Although many webmasters describe this as “Google has banned my site” or “I’ve been banned by Google,” I can broadly summarize these situations as a Google Penalty or a manual action. In this article, I wanted to create a comprehensive guide to Google penalties and include statements made by authoritative sources about manual actions.

The main reason these penalties exist is to keep algorithms free from spammy content and make the search engine more useful for users. The introduction of the Penguin algorithm in April 2012 marked an important step in detecting web spam techniques. In recent years, as features such as AIO have been added to search results, the number of spam updates has generally increased and different spam-prevention mechanisms have been developed. Google detects more than 40 million spam pages every day.

Web Spam Overview

In recent years, Google has started publishing many statistics about how it deals with spam. From time to time, it has also warned webmasters with reminders in its blog posts. I have not seen a new webspam report for 2025 and beyond; if there is one, you can let me know. Let’s look at the situation using the latest data I could find:

To summarize the 2023 spam-fighting statistics:

• SpamBrain detected 5 times more spam sites than in 2021 and 200 times more than when it was first launched. As a result, more than 99% of search results are free of spam. I think that is a very good statistic!
• Similarly, SpamBrain was trained to identify sites that generate spam backlinks and pass those backlinks to other sites, allowing it to detect 50 times more sites.
• There was a 10-fold improvement in hacked-site detection.
• SpamBrain identifies sites during the crawling stage and helps prevent low-quality pages from entering the index.
• Visits to scam sites decreased by 50% compared with 2021.

Since the page where Google shared some statistics about fighting spam was redirected, I wanted to check the latest available data through the Web Archive and include it in the article. Although the number of manual actions has naturally decreased compared with 2018, Google now applies most of these penalties algorithmically. Here is an image showing that 0.22% of sites in the index received a manual action: (2018)

Pure spam is among the most common types of manual actions. You will find many details about pure spam later in this article. In previous years, Google also showed some examples of sites that had received manual actions:

The screenshot below, which I took in February 2018, shows weekly reconsideration requests submitted from 2006 up to that date:

By combining manual actions, spam types identified by algorithms, and machine learning, Google has been able to detect spam more quickly. Google has never claimed that its algorithms prevent 100% of spam, and it also states that its systems are not perfect:

Another blog post also clearly explains that spam-detection systems are not always perfect and can still be improved:

Google continues to improve its spam-fighting algorithms with the help of spam reports:

If you see spam on the web, you can report it using the spam report form. It is almost impossible to determine from the outside whether submitted spam reports are acted on. Google may apply a manual action to an entire site or only to specific URLs.

What is a Google Manual Action Penalty?

As the name suggests, a manual action is a type of penalty applied by real people to an entire website or to specific pages.

It is almost impossible to identify Google penalties from the outside. Authorized account owners can see Google penalties in Search Console. For this reason, I do not really recommend relying on systems described as Google ban checkers.

J. Mueller had stated that many manual actions are now handled algorithmically by Google and that many of them are probably no longer necessary:

What Happens When a Penalty is Received from Google?

When Google applies a manual action to your site:

• Your site’s rankings may drop,
• Your rich results may not appear in the SERP,
• Your site’s pages may be removed from the index,
• Your organic conversion rates may decrease,
• Your organic traffic may decline.
• If you are present on platforms such as Google News & Google Discover, the traffic coming from them may stop.

Recording the date when a manual action was applied and the date when it was removed will be useful for future analyses. Your traffic may drop suddenly after a manual action:

What is the Duration of a Manual Action Penalty?

Manual actions do not have a fixed duration. In some cases, the issue may be resolved within a few days, while in others the penalty can last for 1–2 years. Reconsideration requests and fixing the issues will shorten this period. You can use Search Console to find out whether your site received a penalty in previous years:

Manual Action Types (Google Penalties)

The types of manual actions Google applies to websites vary. I would like to explain them in detail. Unlike algorithmic penalties, website owners are notified of manual actions by email.

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing -using irrelevant keywords on pages only to get traffic from Google instead of providing information to users- is a reason for a manual action.

Examples of keyword stuffing:

• Pages that contain only phone numbers and provide no added value,
• Pages created for spam purposes that contain only names of cities or districts,
• Repeatedly using the same keywords throughout an article, in the meta description, and in many other places in a way that creates spam: “We sell custom-made coffee tables. Our coffee table models are handmade. If you are considering buying a custom coffee table model, please contact our custom coffee table model experts at [email protected].”

Site owners should create content around the keywords they want to rank for in a correct context that does not create spam. Similar practices should never be applied to pages if you want to avoid penalties for this type of spam, which is considered a Black-hat SEO method. I would also like to point out that the fact that other sites engage in this behavior does not mean this type of content is being published in accordance with the guidelines.

In some cases, instead of crawling keyword-stuffed pages, Googlebot may skip those pages and continue crawling the rest of the site that it considers appropriate. If the content provides value in other ways, Google may also ignore keyword stuffing in some cases.

Your pages may lose rankings or perform poorly even without receiving a manual action because Google may simply ignore those pages. This type of spam is also addressed in the context of EEAT. The guidelines include an example labeled “Keyword Stuffed”:

You can see an example of keyword stuffing below:

I would like to remind you that there is no ideal keyword density you should target when using keywords.

When John Mueller was asked why sites using keyword stuffing can still rank at the top, he explained:

Usually we're just ranking them because of other factors - getting one thing wrong doesn't mean you'll never show up in search (lots of sites get things wrong, but they're still useful).

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 23, 2018

Spamming business names in Google Business Profile is something you need to be careful about. Manipulative behavior of this kind, which is frequently seen in Local SEO, can cause your business accounts to be suspended:

In a 2016 patent, Google explains how it detects fake business profiles:

Comment Spam

Some visitors who submit comments may have malicious intentions. In 2015, Google began publishing guidance about this type of spam. They may create spam in your content by adding malicious links to usernames or comments, and this violates Google’s guidelines.

If there are spam comments on every page of your site, Google may think you are encouraging spam content to be published by allowing spam comments to appear on your site. If you previously allowed all comments to be displayed without moderation, it may be useful to go back to those pages and review every comment. This is something not only blogs but also sites with pages such as guestbooks should pay attention to.

If you publish incoming spam comments on your site without putting them through a moderation process and receive a manual action notification:

• Your pages may lose rankings,
• You may send your loyal users to irrelevant or malicious websites,
• Pages filled with spam comments may be removed from the index entirely.

In CMS platforms such as WordPress, you can review comments before publishing them and delete comments that create spam. If your site is under a comment-spam attack, you may consider temporarily disabling comments:

You can also take additional security measures for comments in WordPress. You may also consider using reCAPTCHA:

You can add nofollow to comment links pointing out of your site. This prevents PageRank from being passed through links you may have missed and may also discourage spammers from adding comments:

It may also be useful for forums to prevent pages such as profile pages from being indexed and block these profile pages with the robots.txt file. As software-based solutions have improved, this type of spam has become less common than in previous years:

You can find detailed information about this type of manual action on the Prevent Comment Spam page.

User-Generated Spam

In some cases, if the necessary precautions are not taken, spam pages created by users can cause your site to receive a manual action.

What Is User-Generated Spam?

This is a type of spam generally seen in comment sections, forums, blogs, or essentially any site that allows users to leave a link or comment.

Examples of user-generated spam content:

• Malicious sites created within free hosting services,
• Unmoderated forum posts,
• Signatures used in forums,
• Malicious links on Q&A sites.

Example:

To Prevent UGC Spam:

You may consider locking very old forum topics that are no longer current and would not provide value to users even if new comments were added.

• If you are dealing with a specific type of spam, you can add terms associated with it, such as “watch movie,” to your blocked-words list.
• You can expand your moderator team.
• You can regularly crawl your external links to identify links pointing outside the site.
• Limit the ability to add links to posts according to specific rules.
• Periodically review posts from your most active contributors.
• You can add nofollow to links submitted by users.

A UGC spam notification received in Google Search Console:

You need to identify the types of spam users may create and take precautions. Sites that do not comply with these rules may be penalized with a manual action.

Google also published a study examining the impact of user-generated content (UGC) spam on user experience. The study was conducted on Google Play with a sample of 3,300 participants across India, South Korea, and the United States. A total of 1,100 participants from each country took part in the study. I will not go into too much detail, but the research includes the following five types of UGC spam:

• Nonsensical: “asdsad jksjfs sdhd”
• Irrelevant: “Mentioning a movie app in a game app”
• Social Media: “follow me at @sss”
• Slang/rude language: “idiot etc.”
• Promotions: “sign up now for an instant discount”

You can watch the video at this address:

The effort required to reduce this type of spam from 5% to 0% is much greater than the effort required to reduce it from 10% to 5%. I can say that Google will continue working to improve UGC through its efforts in this area.

Automatically Generated Content

As the name suggests, automatically generated content refers to content created with certain programs or systems without adding any value, and it can lead to penalties.

Examples include:

• Automatically translated and meaningless content,
• Automatically generated text that contains only keywords without forming a meaningful whole,
• Articles created using automated methods known as Markov Chains,
• Meaningless content created by replacing words with synonyms,
• Pages created only by pulling data from RSS feeds,
• Content created by taking content from multiple sites without adding any value or applying moderation.

Google provides a limited set of examples for automatically generated content and explains that this manual action may also apply beyond the examples listed. I would also like to remind you that Google has not made a new update to the documentation page for this manual action type for many years. There is also a type of penalty related to automated queries.

Sneaky Redirects

Sneaky redirects are a way of sending users to content that is different from what they saw in the search results. The main issue is serving different content to users and Googlebot. The first announcement about this type of behavior was published on April 30, 2014.

For example, if users see content about “Structured data” in the search results but are taken to a page about “movie X” as soon as they click, the webmaster has deliberately redirected them to misleading content.

In another example, desktop users may see the normal site while mobile users are redirected to a different address, which can create this problem. To avoid being affected by this type of manual action, you should simply make sure that the purpose of the redirect (JavaScript & 301) accurately reflects what is actually happening.

You can check whether your website has a sneaky redirect using the code below:

<script type="text/javascript">location.replace("https://domain.com");</script>

With sneaky redirects, not only the device being used but also the source the user came from -such as a search engine or social media- can matter. These sources can be detected and redirects can be applied accordingly. In the past, unreliable advertising companies have caused publisher websites to experience these problems.

In addition to a manual action, you can also lose users’ trust in your site this way.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a natural part of the web, so there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Site owners working in affiliate marketing should simply be a little more careful about this issue.

If affiliate sites create pages without providing users with any additional value, Google may consider those pages to be low value. Having low-quality pages with the same content in the SERP also creates a poor user experience.

Examples:

• Pages containing affiliate sales links that copy product reviews or descriptions word for word without adding any additional value,
• Affiliate sites with very little original content.

I recommend doing your best to perform better than the main merchant site. To make more sales, instead of copying content from the main site, you can create content with greater added value. You can find more information here.

Scraped Content

Sites that copy content directly from other websites without adding any value, or republish it after changing only a very small portion, may receive a manual action for scraped content.

Content created entirely by copying even from high-quality sources such as Wikipedia will still be low quality. This type of copying can also sometimes lead to issues such as copyright infringement.

Examples:

• Sites that scrape content through bots or manually without adding any value,
• Sites that copy content directly from other sites and change only a small part of it or replace words with synonyms,
• Sites whose only function is to take elements such as images and videos from other websites may be penalized with a manual action.

About seven years ago, Google’s Matt Cutts commented on this issue on Reddit:

This situation (Valuable inventory: Scraped content) is also against Google AdSense policies:

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are, in the classic definition, low-quality intermediate pages created to rank for specific search queries, and they violate quality guidelines.

The New York Times published an article about low-quality search results around 10 years ago. The doorway pages manual action was first introduced on March 16, 2015.

For example, pages such as “Beşiktaş SEO Agency” and “Kadıköy SEO Agency,” created for specific districts and whose entire purpose is to target those queries, are doorway pages. In reality, these pages direct users toward the same goal. The main problem with doorway pages appears when they provide no value to users. This issue generally occurs when the same pages are repeatedly created by changing only part of the keywords.

That sounds like doorway pages, not something I'd recommend.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) December 10, 2019

This situation can occur across multiple pages on a single site or across multiple different domains. In this guideline, fully understanding user intent and the content being provided is very important. You can learn more details here.

Cloaking / Hidden Texts and Links

Cloaking is the practice of serving different content to search engines and users, and it violates Google’s guidelines.

Google publishes these two guideline violations separately in its documentation, but I wanted to explain them together. Examples of cloaking include:

• Showing an HTML version to Googlebot while showing users only image & video elements,
• Detecting the user-agent and showing Googlebot the keywords you want to rank for while not showing those ranking keywords to normal users,
• Showing users keywords in a normal-looking way while using excessive keywords in the HTML to show Googlebot different words,
• Deliberately hiding text behind images,
• Using white text on a white background so that it cannot be seen,
• Setting the font size to 0.

You can watch the video prepared by Matt Cutts with Turkish subtitles:

For IP-based redirects, you also need to avoid showing Googlebot a different version. Since G-bot crawls from the United States, there will be no problem as long as you are not serving one version to U.S. users and a different one to G-bot.

Using hidden keywords can also harm your site:

We should not treat every cloaking method as a violation. On JavaScript-based sites, additional explanatory text may sometimes be used for HTML elements, and this may not count as cloaking. When identifying a cloaking violation, it is more accurate to look for manipulative behavior.

When Mueller was asked on Reddit whether using hreflang is considered cloaking, he answered “no”:

You also need to be careful when running A/B tests. It is stated that there should be no problem as long as you do not specifically treat Googlebot differently, and it is also emphasized that the test should have a limited lifespan:

Sites that publish part of their content through a subscription model may consider using the relevant structured data to avoid cloaking issues.

Backlink Violations

Your sites may be penalized for paid backlinks and violations of link-scheme guidelines.

According to Google, site owners can pay to promote their own websites, and that is completely normal. However, when backlinks are involved, Google recommends adding nofollow to the links or sponsored if the link is sponsored.

Examples of situations that may be considered link-scheme violations:

• Practices known as reciprocal link exchanges,
• Paid links that do not include nofollow,
• Aggressive use of anchor text,
• Hiding the fact that backlinks in articles are sponsored,
• Obtaining backlinks to your site through unnatural methods using so-called automated backlink programs,
• Low-quality directory sites,
• Obtaining backlinks in areas such as footers in an unnatural way.

You can use SEO tools such as CognitiveSEO that provide strong backlink data. For example, you can clearly distinguish how many of your backlinks appear natural and how many appear unnatural:

You can easily identify where on the page backlinks are placed. By quickly checking sites that tools label as “unnatural links,” you can create the best possible link profile for your site:

I also strongly recommend reading Fatih Özkösemen’s reminder about sponsored articles. If your work, such as press releases, generates backlinks to your site, you can add nofollow to those links:

When a link is obtained without nofollow and in an unnatural way, Google may consider it a violation. Sometimes Google may apply a manual action, while in other cases its algorithms may choose not to use the signals from those links for ranking.

Google explains that it can ignore random backlinks pointing to your site:

Random links collected over the years aren't necessarily harmful, we've seen them for a long time too and can ignore all of those weird pieces of web-graffiti from long ago. Disavow links that were really paid for (or otherwise actively unnaturally placed), don't fret the cruft.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 25, 2019

So what does earning backlinks naturally mean? I would like to explain this using Google’s own statement:

I also want to mention the two manual action types that were previously described as unnatural links to your site and unnatural links from your site. In short, you can receive a manual action both because of low-quality/spam links pointing out from your site and because of links pointing to your site. Here is the explanation for unnatural links to your site:

Here is the explanation for unnatural links from your site:

You can identify backlinks pointing to your site through Search Console. After clicking “top linking sites” in the Links section, you can view all the data:

You can disavow backlinks obtained through unnatural methods using the backlink disavow tool. If this is the reason for your manual action, I strongly recommend using this tool and explaining the details in your reconsideration request:

Disavowed backlinks will continue to appear in Search Console, but Google will process them once it crawls those pages.

Structured Data Spam

n a structured-data manual action. Because of this manual action, only pages marked for rich results will stop appearing as rich results in search. For example, pages marked up with product schema may no longer appear in the SERP with stars or price information. If you violate the guidelines, you may receive a manual action email like the example below:

You can read the structured data guidelines and review your schema implementations while paying attention to the specific guidelines for each type of structured data. For example, fact check schema has specific guidelines such as the following:

If you receive a manual action because of structured data spam, it is enough to fix the errors on the relevant pages and submit another review request.

Content with Little Value / Thin Value

If you create very low-quality content/pages, your entire site or specific sections of it may be penalized with a manual action for content with little added value.

Examples of content with little added value:

• Automatically generated content,
• Doorway pages,
• Pages that are difficult to read because they are full of punctuation and spelling errors,
• Content that provides users with little detail and pages with almost no meaningful content,
• Content that is very difficult to read because of design problems,
• Scraped content,
• Not having enough unique content.

You can watch Google’s video on this topic here:

You can crawl your site comprehensively to fix duplicate content and provide more original, higher-quality content. If you have not read it yet, I recommend reading the article on creating high-quality content.

Sloppily created content will not bring you much organic traffic anyway. You may also receive a manual action if you have too much of this type of content. Remember that you are responsible for every piece of content on your site; even if it was written years ago, if it no longer provides real added value, you can plan to update it and improve its quality.

Pure Spam

Pure spam is one of the most severe manual actions Google can apply to a website. Sites that use the most aggressive spam techniques may be penalized for pure spam.

Repeatedly receiving manual actions can also lead to a pure spam penalty. For example, if your site repeatedly receives penalties for issues such as content with little added value or unnatural links, you may eventually see a pure spam notification in Search Console. Keyword stuffing and all other aggressive forms of spam may fall under this penalty.

When you receive a pure spam penalty, your pages are completely removed from Google’s index. Within 12 to 24 hours after the manual action notification is received, Google removes your pages from the index. If you also receive traffic from platforms such as Google News, your pages may be removed from the News index as well.

Security Issues

Security issues are different than manual actions. In order to protect and inform the users and website owners, Google may reveal to the visitors a site or some pages of it being hacked. One of the main differences between manual actions and security issues is that the latter requires spam to be reviewed manually.

You can read the article on sites with malicious behavior. If you have problems such as content injection, you will have to fix them.

You may also encounter social engineering content problem. When you receive such notifications, you should follow the steps explained by Google and consider removing relevant pages if that is required:

You can also arrange pages mentioned in the malware or unwanted software list. Especially if you have infected files on your website, you must remove them:

Google News & Discover Manual Actions

Your site may also receive a manual action if it violates Google News policies. The reason for the manual action and the affected pages will be shown in Search Console. Related pages may also receive manual actions for violations of Google Discover guidelines. These new penalty types began being shared publicly on February 8, 2021.

For sites that violated Discover policies and did not comply with the guidelines, messages like the one below were sent:

The URLs causing this violation will stop appearing in Discover results. This violation notice is a warning that your site is not eligible only for the News and Discover surfaces. It will not affect Google Search results.

For publishers using AMP, the main topic of the AMP content and the normal web page must also be the same. The content does not need to be identical; users simply need to be able to access the same information in both the AMP and normal versions. If a violation is detected here, you may receive a manual action for an “AMP content mismatch.”

Reconsideration Requests

The way to recover from the manual actions I have described throughout this article is to fix the issues and then submit a reconsideration request to Google. This form will only appear if your site has received a manual action.

In the reconsideration request form, you should explain the changes you made honestly and support them with evidence. You then need to wait for the reviewers’ assessment. Reconsideration requests can take a few days or around a week. In the end, your request will either be rejected or approved. Example form usage:

After a rejection, I recommend not submitting the form again before fixing the issues. Do not submit another form before you receive the result email, because your site is still under review during that time. If your request is completed successfully, you will receive a message like the one below.

In very rare cases, reviewers may send you notes to help resolve the issue. You can think of these as short instructions such as “provide additional evidence.”

I wanted to answer some questions I frequently see about manual actions:

-I Bought a Domain/Site and Found Out It Was Banned. What Should I Do?

In situations like this, you can clearly explain the circumstances in your reconsideration request.

-Can a Site Receive More Than One Manual Action?

Yes, your site can receive more than one type of manual action. Below, you can see an example I took from a video:

-How Can I Get My Old Traffic Back After a Manual Action?

In reality, you had already gained additional traffic through spam. Once you recover from the manual action, it is perfectly normal not to regain your previous traffic because you deleted/edited those pages.

-Site X Is Spamming but Does Not Receive a Penalty. Why?

Google is not perfect, of course. It is not possible to determine from the outside whether a site has received a manual action. For example, site X may have received a penalty for content with little added value, but the penalty may apply only to specific pages.

-The Manual Action Was Removed but I Still Have Indexing Problems. How Can I Fix Them?

Especially after recovering from penalties such as pure spam, you may experience fluctuations in indexing for a few days. You should crawl your entire site and fix any issues that may be preventing indexing.

I tried to create this article about Google penalties and manual actions as comprehensively as possible, supporting it with evidence and statements from authoritative sources. In fact, every type of manual action could be a separate article on its own, but I wanted to bring them all together here. I hope it has been useful to the dear ZEO followers who took the time to read all the way to these final lines.

That’s all. Wishing all of us Search Console accounts that say “No issues detected” :)