Google Betas Dropping Manual Actions Automatically For Hacked Sites

Google announced they are experimenting with automatically reversing manual actions for hacked sites that have undergone the process of removing the hack.

Google said, “… we’re beta testing the automated removal of some hacked manual actions. In Search Console if Google sees a ‘Hacked site’ manual action under ‘Partial matches,’ and our systems detect that the hacked content is no longer present, in some cases, we will automatically remove that manual action.”

So if Google detects the hack has been removed, Google may just reverse the manual action for you, even if you do not submit the reconsideration request.

Google still suggests that you check to see if you have a manual action and if you need to submit the reconsideration request. Google wrote, “We still recommend that you submit a reconsideration request if you see any manual actions, but don’t be surprised if a ‘Hacked site’ manual action disappears and saves you the trouble!”

One has to suspect that some of the leading manual actions that do not have submissions from webmasters around reconsideration requests in the Google Search Console are hacked site notifications. Many hacked sites remain hacked even after warnings, but one has to assume that those hacked sites that get fixed may also forget to submit a reconsideration request in the Google Search Console. This would clear up that queue, not just for the webmasters, but also for Google.

Here is a picture of what this manual action looks like:

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.