Manual Penalty

What is a Manual Penalty?

For a Webmaster There is nothing worse than being Google Search Console to be notified that one of your websites has a Manual Penalty has received. Manual Penalties are Google's way of demoting or removing websites. These penalties are not related to Google algorithm changes like Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird or the others. It is simply Google's way of penalizing the websites you consider spammy.

For this you can receive manual penalties from Google:

• Unnatural links to your website
• Hacked page
• Thin Content
• Pure spam websites
• User generated spam
• Cloaking and stealthy redirects to other websites
• Hidden text and spamming keywords
• Spammy Freehosts

Should we be worried about Manual Penalties?

The answer to this question depends on one important factor: does Google's penalty affect the organic Traffic and/or the rankings of your website?

Some manual penalties may not have a significant impact on the organic Traffic and the Ranking of your website. For example, they may only affect pages that are no longer up-to-date or important for you, as they no longer generate revenue for your company. In this case, it may be worth deleting the pages in question instead of trying to remove the Manual Penalty to remove.

So how can you tell if a Manual Penalty harm your website and thus your business? The best way to do this is to call your Google Analytics on. Pay attention to the date when Google has penalized their website and now consider your Traffic before and after the penalty. Are there any significant changes?

If you are looking for the Manual Penalty you don't see a significant negative change in organic traffic (and conversions), then you may not have to worry about it. Or, at least, you don't have to try to make the penalty go away by any means necessary. However, if you do see a significant, negative change, you should react immediately!

Even if you have a Manual Penalty received from Google, this does not mean the end of the world. You may (possibly) have a long way to go with fixing your website, but if you are honest about the errors, it can still be fixed. For this, you can make use of a "Reconsideration Request" and convince Google to remove the penalty with the removal of the errors as well as a justification.