There are 16 types of Google manual actions listed in Search Console's help documentation, as of October 2026. Each one names a specific spam policy breach, and each has its own cleanup before you can request a review.
By Kristijan GjorgjioskiIndependent SEO consultantPublished 18 October 2026 · 9 min read
The types of Google manual actions are more specific than most people expect.
A manual action isn't a vague "penalty".
It's a named breach, applied by a person at Google, with a named fix.
I've listed all 16 below, grouped by what they target. For each one you'll get what it means, what usually causes it and what Google expects you to do before you ask for a review.
First, confirm you have one.
Open Search Console and go to Security & Manual Actions → Manual actions.
If the report says no issues were detected, none of the 16 types below applies to you.
If an action is listed, the notice tells you three things:
According to Google's Manual actions report help page, an action means a human reviewer decided pages on the site don't comply with Google's spam policies.
Here's the full list at a glance:
| # | Manual action type | What it targets |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unnatural links to your site | Bought or manipulative inbound links |
| 2 | Unnatural links from your site | Paid or swapped outbound links |
| 3 | Thin content with little or no added value | Scraped, doorway and thin affiliate pages |
| 4 | Major spam problems | Aggressive or repeated policy breaches |
| 5 | Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing | Text written for crawlers, not readers |
| 6 | Site reputation policy | Third-party pages riding your domain's strength |
| 7 | Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects | Different content for Google and for users |
| 8 | Sneaky mobile redirects | Mobile visitors sent somewhere unexpected |
| 9 | Cloaked images | Image search showing something users don't see |
| 10 | Back button hijacking | Code that traps users on the page |
| 11 | AMP content mismatch | AMP page differs from its canonical |
| 12 | User-generated spam | Spam posted by your visitors |
| 13 | Site abused with third-party spam | Spam on forums, uploaders and free hosting areas |
| 14 | Spammy free host | A hosting service overrun with spam sites |
| 15 | Structured data issue | Misleading or hidden markup |
| 16 | News and Discover policy violations | Content breaching News or Discover policies |
Not sure the drop you're seeing is a manual action at all? Start with my seven checks for spotting a Google penalty.
Links are where most business sites get caught. There are two types, and they point in opposite directions.
This is the classic link penalty.
A reviewer found a pattern of links pointing at your site that look artificial, deceptive or manipulative. Think paid guest posts, private blog networks, link swaps at scale or keyword-stuffed anchors.
Google's fix list for this one is longer than most:
The disavow step only belongs here. Google's disavow tool page calls it an advanced feature and says incorrect use can harm your performance.
If you're unsure which links count as bad, my guide to toxic backlinks explains why tool scores mislead.
Same problem, other direction.
Your own pages link out in ways that look paid or manipulative. Sold links in old blog posts, excessive link exchanges and "partner" pages are the usual culprits.
If you want links of your own afterwards, earn them with link building strategies that don't involve swaps.
The fix is on your site, so it's quicker:
Then request review with examples of what you changed.
These four target pages that exist to rank rather than to help.
This one hits pages that add nothing of their own.
Google's examples include scraped or duplicated content, thin affiliate pages and doorway pages. Mass-produced location pages with only the town name swapped fall squarely into the doorway bucket.
To fix it, audit for those patterns and add substantial value, or remove the pages. Then request review with examples.
Decide page by page.
Some pages deserve a rewrite, some should merge into a stronger page, and some should go. A clear content strategy stops the same pages creeping back. My content pruning guide covers how I make that call.
This is the severe one.
Google uses it for aggressive or repeated breaches, such as scaled content abuse or cloaking. It usually affects the whole site.
The fix is to bring every part of the site into line with the spam policies, then request review with examples of removed and added content.
Honest note from experience: if a site was built entirely on scaled pages, there may be little left once you've removed them.
That's a business decision before it's an SEO one.
If AI tools wrote much of the site, run what's left through an AI content quality checklist before you request review.
Old tricks still get caught.
This covers invisible text, text in the same colour as the background, text hidden with CSS, and words repeated unnaturally in content, titles or alt text.
Remove the hidden text, or restyle it so users can see it.
Cut the stuffed keywords back to natural language. Titles and alt text count too, and both are covered in my on-page SEO checklist. Then request review.
This targets third-party content published on your domain mainly to borrow its ranking signals. Sponsored coupon sections and outsourced review hubs are the typical examples.
Google gives you four options for the content:
One detail matters here. Google warns that moving the content to a subdomain, subfolder or another established site may not resolve the issue.
The help page also notes this action does not apply in the EEA.
These five all show users something different from what Google saw or what they clicked.
Cloaking serves Google one version of a page and users another. Sneaky redirects send only some visitors somewhere else.
Compare what Google fetched with what users see, using the URL Inspection tool. Remove every difference and every conditional redirect, then request review.
Sometimes nobody on your team did this on purpose.
A hacked plugin can cloak spam pages that only crawlers see. Closing that hole is technical SEO work as much as cleanup.
Here, mobile visitors get redirected to content crawlers can't see, or that has nothing to do with the result they clicked.
Third-party ad scripts are a common source. Google's steps:
Images shown in Google Images differ from, or are hidden behind something on, the page users actually reach.
Show users the same image Google indexed.
If you don't want inline linking, opt out properly or block the images, as the help page describes. Then request review.
This is one of the less familiar names on the list.
It applies when code interferes with browser history so users can't easily return to the page they came from. Aggressive pop-up and ad scripts are the likely source.
Disable or remove the code responsible, then request review.
If your AMP page differs in topic or task from its canonical page, Google shows the canonical instead.
Confirm the canonical reference, align the two versions and check both in URL Inspection. Then request review.
If you no longer need AMP, retiring it properly removes the risk entirely.
You didn't write this spam, but it's on your site, so it's your problem.
Spam in forum posts, comments or profiles: ads, off-topic links, commercial usernames and auto-generated text.
Find and delete the spam.
Then add prevention: moderation, account approval, and the ugc attribute on user links. Request review once it's clean.
Similar, but broader. It covers spam on forums, guestbooks, file uploaders, free hosting areas and even internal search result pages.
Google says this usually affects only the spammy pages. Remove them, block spammy terms, fix any hack, monitor your logs and then request review.
This one is aimed at hosting services, not ordinary site owners.
If a large share of the sites on a free host are spammy, Google may act against the whole service. The fix is to remove the spammy accounts and involve the host's technical team, then request review.
If your business site sits on a free host that gets this action, moving to proper hosting is the faster fix.
The last two are umbrellas with long lists of subtypes.
Your markup is hidden, misleading, irrelevant or describes something that isn't on the page.
The subtypes are mostly job postings, reviews, events, recipes and products.
Self-written reviews of your own business marked up as reviews, promotions marked up as events and companies marked up as products all appear in Google's list.
Update or remove the markup that breaks the guidelines, then request review. Rich results come back once you're eligible again, which isn't guaranteed.
My schema markup generator only builds markup for content you actually show, which is the rule most of these subtypes come back to.
This covers content that breaches Google News or Discover policies. Subtypes include deceptive practices, misleading content, manipulated media, medical content and hateful or harassing content.
For the deception subtypes, clearly disclose who owns the site and any relationships. Then request review with evidence that your editorial practices changed, not just the single article.
The top-level process is the same for all 16.
Google is blunt on step 2: fixing only some pages won't earn a partial return to search results.
A good request explains the issue, describes your fixes and documents the outcome. I keep them short and factual:
Don't resubmit while a request is pending. Google says most reviews take several days or weeks, and link-related requests may take longer.
It restores eligibility, not your old positions.
If bought links propped up your rankings, those links stay worthless after the action goes.
I explain that difference properly in manual action vs algorithmic penalty.
Every manual action tells you its type. Use that.
Match your notice to the list above, fix every affected page and keep a record of each change.
Then submit one complete request.
If the notice is for links, check your backlink quality by hand before you touch a disavow file. If it's for spam or hacked pages, close the hole with your developer first, often as technical SEO work.
And if you'd rather not run the cleanup alone, my Google penalty recovery work starts with the notice, scopes every affected URL and writes the request with the evidence attached. Here's how I handle manual action cleanups from first look to review.
Google's Manual actions report help page lists 16 types of manual action as of October 2026. Two of them are umbrella categories: structured data issues cover more than 20 subtypes, mostly job, review, event and recipe markup, and News and Discover policy violations cover around 16 content subtypes. Google adds and retires types over time, so check the help page itself.
Google does not publish figures for that. In the sites I am asked to look at, unnatural links to your site and thin content with little or no added value come up far more than any other types, mostly on sites that bought links or published pages at scale in the past. Most other types are rare for ordinary business sites.
Do not plan on it. Google's help documentation tells you to fix the issue and request a review, and that is the route that removes an action. Waiting it out leaves the affected pages demoted or missing from results for as long as the action stands, which is usually far more costly than the cleanup.
Some do. Google has a dedicated umbrella action for News and Discover policy violations, which covers deceptive practices, misleading content, manipulated media and other content policies. These actions can limit how a site appears in those surfaces. The fix is to change the content or editorial practice, then request review with evidence of what changed.
About the author
Kristijan Gjorgjioski
Independent SEO consultant · 6+ years in SEO · 60+ client websites worked on
I'm an independent SEO consultant with 6+ years in SEO. I run audits, migrations and content programmes for businesses in Europe, the UK and the USA, and I build the automation behind my own research.
Book a free 30-minute call. I look at your site first and tell you plainly what I would fix, and in what order.