Technical SEO
How to handle a Google manual action
Read the notice in Search Console to see exactly what was flagged, fix the underlying cause completely rather than partially, document what you changed, then submit a reconsideration request explaining it honestly. Partial fixes get rejected and the next review takes longer.
Before you start
- Search Console access
- The ability to change whatever caused it
The steps
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Step 1: Read the notice carefully
Security and Manual Actions → Manual Actions. It names the issue type and whether it is site-wide or partial.
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Step 2: Identify every instance
Not just the examples given. Google shows samples, not a complete list, and fixing only the samples fails.
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Step 3: Fix the cause completely
Remove the unnatural links, delete the thin pages, correct the structured data. Partial remediation is the main reason requests are rejected.
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Step 4: Document what you did
What was wrong, what you changed, when, and what prevents recurrence.
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Step 5: Submit a reconsideration request
Honest and specific. Do not argue about whether the action was fair.
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Step 6: Wait, without resubmitting
Reviews take days to weeks and are done by a person. Resubmitting restarts the queue.
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Step 7: Fix the process, not only the pages
Whatever produced the problem will produce it again if nothing about how you work changed.
What triggers them most often on small sites
Unnatural links from a bought package, thin or scaled content published at volume, structured data marking up things not present on the page, and user-generated spam in comments nobody moderates. Self-authored review markup is the most common structured-data instance.
Be honest in the request
It is read by a person. Admitting what happened, describing precisely what you removed, and explaining what changed about your process is considerably more effective than a defensive account. Denying something visible in your own backlink profile fails immediately.
The background behind this
The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers the reasoning in about 6 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.