Google investigating missing manual actions

Over the past 24-hours or so there have been reports of manual actions disappearing from Google Search Console.

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There are widespread reports that manual actions are disappearing from Google Search Console. If you had manual actions and they are not showing up this morning, you are not alone. Daniel Waisberg from Google said he is investigating these reports.

What is a manual action? Google will issue 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 webmaster quality guidelines. These manual actions are displayed within Google Search Console and stay there until the manual action is lifted. You can learn more about these manual actions over here.

What do they look like? Here is a screen shot of a manual action:

Google Search Console Manual Actions New 1536149576

But many who have manual actions are seeing “no issues detected” in the manual actions viewer within Search Console:

Google Manual Actions

Google is investigating. Waisberg from the Google Search Relations team, who works closely with the Search Console team, said, “Looking into it…” when I asked about it:

More complaints. Here are some of the complaints from the SEO community about the mysteriously missing manual actions:

Why we care. Often seeing a “no issues detected” message in the manual actions viewer within Google Search Console is a reason to smile and celebrate, espesially if the site had a manual action. But do not celebrate or get your hopes up today if you see that. It looks like a bug and Google will probably fix it soon.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is 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.

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