Escalating the control over the search results for a query, Google announced 12-new manual action penalties that could make websites disappear from the search result. Human administrators or operators manually penalize websites and prevent them from showing during a search result.
The new announcement marks the beginning of a new control from the search engine giant, as it tries to provide better results. A website violating the Google Discover and Google News policies will receive the penalty. Earlier, manual penalties from Google were possible only when a website violates the search policies.
As the name implies, Google’s manual penalty involves a human moderator who monitors the websites’ activities. The moderator issues penalties to all the websites that breach the policy norms. The action was previously observed by automation action, making it unreliable at times.
For now, Google did not reveal the penalty that a website will receive upon violating the norms and guidelines. However, according to the previous statistics, a website that does not meet the criteria or fails to follow the guidelines receives a lower ranking in search results. Further, Google removes websites from the search result that fall under the frequent offender’s list.
The Help page of Google fails to indicate whether it will demote the pages from appearing in a search result or remove the site altogether and whether the penalty applies to Google Search.
Table of Contents
ToggleThe 12-New Manual Action Penalties for Violating Google News and Discover
Of the twelve penalties that Google announced for violating the guidelines, nine are applicable for both News and Discover, two cater to Discover, and one solely to the News.
The single penalty that applies to Google News is for violating the transparency policy. A website will face action from Google for not providing accurate information, bylines, dates for the articles, and relevant information about authors, publisher, news network, or company behind the site.
The two penalties applicable for Google Discover are for misleading and adult-themed content. The violating comes into effect when Google discovers sex, nudity, sex acts, explicit material, and sexual suggestions. It will also penalize websites if it finds that the content is falling under “clickbait.”
The other nine manual penalties from Google are as follows:
- Harassing Content: Content that is bullying, involves threat and harassing.
- Sexually Explicit Content: Content that has explicit imagery or sexual videos that cause sexual arousal.
- Medical Content: Content that aims to provide information on treatment and give advice or diagnosis for commercial purposes.
- Violence and Gore Content: Content that glorifies violence or uses extreme graphics to provoke a reaction in disgust and hate.
- Dangerous Content: Content that poses a severe threat to people and animals.
- Terrorist Content: Content relevant to terrorism, a terrorist organization, or acts of terrorist extremists. It also includes content that aims at recruiting people, celebrate terror actions, and provoke violence.
- Vulgar Language and Profanity: Content that uses obscenities and profanities.
- Manipulated Media: Content that uses manipulated media, such as images, video, and audio, to mislead, deceive, and defraud.
- Hateful Content: Content that spreads and provokes hate.
Is It Possible to Recover from Manual Action Penalty?
It is possible for a website to recover from manual action penalty after the site owner receives the message via the Google Search Console. The Search Console is the company’s service that allows a site owner and webmasters to check indexing status and the ability to increase the ranking on the search engine.
Google will provide the complete information related to the penalty and why the site received the manual action penalty in the first place. It will also provide details about recovering from the status and allow Google to review the same before reconsidering placing the website in the search results.
The only way that a site can list itself in a search ranking is by removing the offending content and submitting a request to Google for reconsideration.
Conclusion
The 12-new manual action penalties from Google aim to provide a better search result to users and reduce offending content from the Internet. Ensure that your website follows the guidelines and avoids displaying offending content and media to rank better in search results.