Google Search Unleashes Manual Actions Galore After Spam Coverage Updates

Google has unleashed tons of manual actions, search ranking penalties you can see within Google Search Console, after it released its search spam policy updates on Tuesday. The manual actions seemed to mostly have been distributed yesterday, Wednesday, March 6th, a day after Google announced the new spam policy changes.

As a reminder, Google has three new/changed search spam policies; content and expired domain abuse that began enforcement yesterday and the site reputation abuse policy that begins enforcement in May 2024. I go into those policy updated in detail over here.

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 the Google 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, Google said.

Google has been busy issues manual actions to these sites it believes are in violation of these two new policies and other spam policy violations. In fact, many SEOs and site owners are saying their sites are no longer showing in the Google Search index, even for a site command, after receiving the manual actions.

Just to be clear, those impacted by the March 2024 core update will not receive manual actions. Algorithmic updates do not lead to notifications in Search Console, no matter how badly we all want an automated action viewer in Search Console. It is also possible to be hit by a manual action and also an algorithmic penalty (Google does not like to call them penalties).

I received a number of these reports on X and also in the comments area here. Glenn Gabe summed it up with this GIF:

Google’s manual actions team last night. pic.twitter.com/9zCLYXmURd

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 6, 2024

Here are those complaints or mentions of this happening:

@glenngabe @lilyraynyc @Marie_Haynes @searchliaison
Received a Manual Penalty on one of my oldest websites saying that it is pure SPAM which is totally not the case as we are doing the best possible work in niche since 2016. Would love to get some help. pic.twitter.com/JuEfkc8pqb

— Harsh (@seo_harsh) March 6, 2024

IMO Google is first de indexing known shit sites to save on processing power for the later parts of the updates 🤷‍♂️

— Gael Breton (@GaelBreton) March 6, 2024

My site has 32000 post and I don’t know how to find spammy article. pic.twitter.com/jWq5e7pwLS

— Waqas Mushtaq (@aCodizOfficial) March 6, 2024

🔥 10 Sitios totalmente desindexados en #Google, solo algunos de los que encontré haciendo algunas revisiones:

🔴 equityatlas .org [4M – 900k]🔴 filmifeed .com [1M – 850k]🔴 qmunicatemagazine .com [750k – 680k]🔴 newsunzip .com [400k – 290k]🔴 tvguidetime .com [300k – 770k]… pic.twitter.com/ZJ4KQo0ElE

— Bruno Dangelo (@porteseo) March 6, 2024

I was checking out a pool of SERPs I monitor for a collection of horrible spam sites that have been present and creeping around for 12-18 months. Many are completely deindexed, and others are hidden in filter=0 or literally bunched up at the bottom (the actual bottom, like the… pic.twitter.com/Su2gpIoH8z

— Jeff Coyle (@jeffrey_coyle) March 6, 2024

A lot of sites got hit by manual action penalty overnight.#seo #coreupdate @googlesearchc #Google #GSC pic.twitter.com/dxXbdwyhjN

— Azad hossen 🇧🇩 (@azadhossen241) March 6, 2024

lol, site was hit by May 2022 update & I’ve not done much to it since cause I’d done everything “right” on it. Original images & research, no AI content, 6 years old and just over 100 posts. A large site in the niche (still indexed) did steal my content and counter DMCA’d me tho pic.twitter.com/HwEnXn8Zhu

— Shawna Newman 🏳️‍🌈 (@ShawnaNewman) March 6, 2024

My biggest money site was also hit with manual actions! I’m confused and don’t know what next to do as anything Google is 50/50 even if you are innocent.

— Akinbobola A. (@bobbydoo2003) March 6, 2024

It’s all manual penalties atm. Sites that have been reported on and on for months are getting delisted now.

Btw. Has anyone seen an algo update delisting website completely from index? I’m only familiar with it after manual action.

— Karbofoni (@karbofoni) March 6, 2024

Google is definitely manually de-indexing mass AI spam sites right now.

This one was ranking #1 for “how old is Taylor Swift’s daughter”

She doesn’t have a daughter. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/yAvQajSQJ4

— Mike Futia (@mikefutia) March 6, 2024

@searchliaison One of my 9 years old human content websites got a manual penalty & everything was de-indexed overnight
– All the content was human-written
-I was publishing 20 articles daily about celebrities and the entertainment industry pic.twitter.com/9wjAOddbK5

— Learningweb (@seoninja69) March 7, 2024

Google just announced the March 2024 spam updates, and now I’m hearing of at LEAST 25 domains/sites that have received manual action penalties for “pure spam”.

So Google’s not just dealing with it via algo updates, they’re penalizing sites and giving them manual actions.

If you… pic.twitter.com/2DKp0gEZEd

— Bill Hartzer (@bhartzer) March 6, 2024

And here are some more examples of sites that were heavily impacted by the September HCU(X) that are now receiving manual actions for pure spam (and totally deindexed)… I’ll share more examples of volatility soon. pic.twitter.com/Cxr8a8Q7xd

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 7, 2024

There are also a ton of these complaints in the comments area here.

Also, here is an affiliate guy who was using a ton of AI content and other means to monetize his sites and he said he was “clapped” by the update. He said he is out about $13,000 per month. Here is his video:

And I love Boser – he’s been doing SEO since before there was a Google:

No one saw it coming? Are you serious? Here’s a little tip… If you talk shit in public about how you are spamming the shit out of Google, you will get torched. That’s how it’s always been, and always will be.

— Greg Boser (@GregBoser) March 7, 2024

I do wonder how bad it will be when Google begins enforcement for the site reputation abuse policy.

Forum discussion at X.