In a recent discussion, Google’s John Mueller provided an in-depth explanation of the manual actions process. He detailed how Google goes about assigning a manual spam penalty.
Mueller highlighted that Google typically favors an algorithmic approach. However, in extreme circumstances, they may opt to manually remove a webpage from search results.
Google Prefers Algorithmic Approaches
It’s widely recognized that Google prefers using algorithms to mitigate spam techniques. This is because removing a single website doesn’t close the loophole allowing a spam page to rank. Developing an algorithmic solution to identify and remove all sites using a spam technique is more effective.
Here’s what Google’s John Mueller shared:
“…from a manual point of view we try to take action when we realize that we can’t solve it algorithmically. When something is really causing a problem and it’s affecting our search results… that’s some place where the manual web spam team might step in and say we need to take action here.
Which could be to demote the website in search to kind of neutralize specific elements on a page. It could be in an extreme case to remove a page from search."
As evidenced by his statement, manual actions are taken when algorithmic solutions aren’t viable.
What types of spam resist algorithmic solutions? Historically, Google has applied manual actions to specific industries that successfully exploited search results.
An example of a manual action that couldn’t be addressed algorithmically involved job postings. Google warned that failing to remove expired job postings could result in a manual action.
Google issued a warning about a possible manual action. Presumably, this type of spam could not be addressed algorithmically, hence the warning of potential manual action.
Google Does Not Casually Ban Sites
John Mueller offered insight into the manual action penalty process being peer-reviewed. A single team member cannot independently impose such actions. This ensures that manual actions are considered serious matters and undergo review by other team members.
Here’s how John Mueller described the penalty process:
“But these are things where people manually look at these pages and all of the actions from the manual web spam team they get reviewed by someone else on the team. So it’s not that one person can come in and say I’m confused about this website and remove it from the Internet.
It’s really something which we try to do fairly rarely and usually really in kind of the extreme cases.”
Don’t Confuse a Penalty with Inability to Rank
There is often confusion between penalties and ranking issues. A true penalty is either algorithmic or manual. Typically, the way to differentiate between a penalty and a ranking issue is by checking a site’s presence in the index. A penalized site will not appear in Google’s search results, which is a classic sign of penalization.
Watch the Google Webmaster Hangout for more insights on Manual Action Penalties.
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