When fewer people arrive at your website from Google, it’s natural to start looking for something to fix. Perhaps an article that readers used to find near the top of the search results now appears much farther down. You can see that something has changed, but the lower position doesn’t explain what caused it.
One possible concern involves the links pointing to your website. These incoming links are called backlinks. Some appear because another writer genuinely wants to recommend your content. Others are arranged mainly to manipulate search rankings, such as when a business pays publishers for links intended to push its pages higher in Google. Those arrangements can violate Google’s spam policies.
If a person at Google reviews a website and finds a policy violation, Google can issue what it calls a manual action. The website owner can see information about that action in Google Search Console, Google’s service for checking search performance and reported problems. A link-related notice gives you something specific to investigate: the problem Google identified and the parts of your website affected by it.
Recovering from a link penalty therefore begins with knowing which situation you’re facing. A confirmed manual action requires you to correct the violation and ask Google to review the site again. A ranking decline without that notice needs a different investigation, because there may be no manual action to remove, and backlinks may not be the cause. Making that distinction first helps you work on the actual problem rather than changing links that had nothing to do with it.
Read the Notice Before Changing Any Links
Open the Manual Actions report for your website in Search Console and expand the notice. Check both the issue described and the affected parts of the site. A manual action can cause pages to rank lower or disappear from search results, but it doesn’t necessarily affect the entire website.
Pay particular attention to the difference between “Unnatural links to your site” and “Unnatural links from your site.”
The first concerns backlinks published on other websites. The second concerns links on your own pages that send readers elsewhere. This distinction determines where the corrections need to happen. Contacting other publishers won’t resolve a problem with links you control on your own website.
Identify the Practice Behind the Problem
For an incoming-link action, review your backlinks alongside records of any link-building work carried out for your website. Search Console’s Links report provides a starting list. An agency’s placement records or your own correspondence can help explain how particular links were obtained.
Look for practices that violate Google’s link spam policy. Examples include buying links to influence rankings, exchanging products for links intended to provide ranking credit, excessive reciprocal-link arrangements, and using automated services to manufacture backlinks.
Google also identifies certain manipulative uses of keyword-focused links in distributed articles, press releases, widgets, and forum comments. These formats aren’t automatically prohibited. The concern is how the links are being used, not merely where they appear.
Once you’ve identified the arrangement responsible, stop it before continuing the cleanup. Otherwise, you could be removing existing links while the same campaign produces more of them. A repeated phrase or a sudden increase in backlinks may help you decide what to investigate, but neither replaces evidence about how the links were created.
Correct the Links and Record What Changes
When problematic backlinks appear on other websites, contact the publishers. Identify the page containing each link and explain which link needs attention. Ask for it to be removed or appropriately marked so it isn’t used to pass ranking credit.
For legitimate advertising, Google prefers rel="sponsored" and also accepts rel="nofollow". These are labels in the link’s underlying code, separate from the words readers click. Advertising can remain useful to readers without being presented as an ordinary editorial link.
For an outgoing-link action, make the corrections on your own pages instead. Remove links that violate the policy or appropriately qualify legitimate paid placements. If the same arrangement appears across several pages, address the whole problem rather than changing just one example.
Keep a working record of the linking page, the requested correction, when you contacted the publisher, and the outcome. Where a publisher confirms a change, open the page to check it. This record will help you explain your work when requesting a review.
Some publishers may not respond. For a confirmed manual action involving unnatural incoming links, Google’s guidance recommends a genuine effort to remove the problematic links first, followed by disavowing those you cannot get removed. Disavowing asks Google not to take specified incoming links into account; it does not delete them from other websites.
Do not submit your entire backlink profile indiscriminately. Google warns that incorrect use can harm search performance, and most websites do not need the tool. Its general guidance recommends considering disavow when there is a substantial number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality backlinks and those links have caused a manual action or are likely to cause one.
Request a Review When the Corrections Are Complete
Once you’ve addressed the violations, return to the Manual Actions report and select Request Review. This is commonly called a reconsideration request: you’re asking Google to examine the corrected situation.
Explain what caused the problem, what you changed, and what your records show. For an incoming-link action, include documentation of removed links and explain which ones you couldn’t get removed. Describe any changes to the process that produced the links, too.
For example, saying that you stopped ordering paid ranking links and documenting the affected placements is more informative than simply promising to follow the rules. The explanation should reflect work you’ve actually completed.
Google says reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, with link-related cases sometimes taking longer. Wait for the decision before submitting another request. If Google finds that the violations have been resolved, it can revoke the manual action.
What If Rankings Fell Without a Manual Action?
Without a manual-action notice, there is no corresponding reconsideration process. That doesn’t mean nothing happened. It means you need to investigate the decline rather than assume that a human reviewer imposed a link penalty.
The differences between these situations can help you decide what to do next.
| What to Check | Manual Action | Ranking Decline Without a Manual Action |
|---|---|---|
| How You Know | Google reports a policy violation in Search Console’s Manual Actions report. | Rankings or traffic decline, but no manual action is reported. |
| What May Cause It | A violation identified by a Google reviewer, such as manipulative link building. | Many possible causes, including ranking updates, technical issues, or links losing ranking credit. |
| What to Do | Correct the reported violation, address problematic links where needed, and request a review. | Investigate the cause and make changes supported by what you find. |
| How Recovery Works | Google can revoke the manual action after a successful review, but previous rankings aren’t guaranteed. | Google’s systems may reflect improvements over time. There is no reconsideration request for this situation. |
In Search Console’s Performance report, compare the affected pages and search queries- the phrases people searched for – before and after the decline. Check whether the change is widespread or concentrated in particular pages. Then examine indexing, accessibility, and security problems that could explain what you’re seeing.
For example, a page that Google can no longer access needs a technical correction, not a backlink cleanup. Fewer people searching for a seasonal topic can also reduce traffic without indicating a penalty. The timing of an algorithm update is useful context, but it doesn’t establish the cause by itself.
An algorithmic ranking decline can improve, but there isn’t a universal penalty-removal procedure. When the evidence points to manipulative link building, address that practice. When it points to content that no longer meets readers’ needs as well as competing pages, work on that content instead.
Google’s core updates reassess results broadly; a decline doesn’t necessarily mean a page violated a policy. Improvements may take time to be reflected, and a site does not always have to wait for the next major core update to see a change. There is no guaranteed recovery schedule.
Does Recovery Mean Getting Your Old Rankings Back?
Removing a manual action resolves a policy issue. It does not reserve the search positions your pages previously held.
This matters particularly when earlier performance depended partly on manipulative links. Google explains that when its systems neutralize link spam, the ranking benefit those links previously generated is lost. Correcting the links doesn’t restore that artificial advantage.
After making changes, keep a dated record of the corrections and monitor the affected pages and queries over comparable periods. Separate the two outcomes you’re checking: whether a reported violation has been resolved, and whether search performance is improving.
A page can compete successfully again without returning to exactly the same position. Search results continue to change as competing pages improve and users’ needs evolve, so a successful correction and a return to an old ranking are not the same measure of recovery.