Google may be issuing more manual action penalties over the past few weeks than it has over the weeks before that. The increase in manual actions seems to have started several weeks ago, but more so recently, according to some SEOs.
It is kind of funny; a decade or more ago, manual action complaints were super common. But then these manual actions kind of died down, and it seemed to me that Google's algorithms were doing most of the heavy lifting. But some are saying we are seeing a lift in the complaints around manual actions recently, not like it was years ago, but more so than it was months ago.
Marie Haynes first posted about this on X. Marie did a ton of manual action consulting for a couple of decades now and she said, "Have had a big increase in requests for help with manual actions lately."
She explained the types of manual actions she has been seeing, they include "thin content, pure spam, and scaled content," she wrote. "Most of these sites are legitimate long standing businesses," she added. I asked Marie about the increase and she said, "Went from essentially no requests to several per week. It's not nearly as high as the pre-Penguin manual action era, but interesting considering I don't actively talk about or advertise consulting around manual actions anymore."
@rustybrick Went from essentially no requests to several per week.
It's not nearly as high as the pre-Penguin manual action era, but interesting considering I don't actively talk about or advertise consulting around manual actions anymore. https://t.co/1IM8P0GlnD
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) October 7, 2026
Daniel Foley Carter also posted he is seeing an influx of these manual actions:
Google Manual Actions are appearing in so many places - the last few months I've been seeing more and more popping up.
And it's no surprise, so much of the SEO industry has turned to short-cuts and scaled content abuse for the short term gains without considering the longer-term pains.
Do you remember the old adage, pay cheap pay twice?
That's what's happening now.
Businesses cheaped out on SEO or cut spend because AI could do it
SEOs at the lower end or spammy end turned to it for scale
and now people like me are part of the clean up and recovery solution.
Manual actions can be devastating - often bringing entire sites down with some losing 90%+ of their traffic overnight.
Here are some of the common manual actions businesses maybe facing now or could be expected to face as Google ramps up on scaled content abuse and spam / link spam.
❌ Back button hijacking
The site interferes with browser history so visitors can’t use the Back button to return as expected.
❌ Site abused with third-party spam
A significant part of the site is being used to publish spam, often through forums, uploads, free hosting or other interactive areas.
❌ User-generated spam
Visitors have posted spam, commonly in forums, comments or user profiles.
❌ Spammy free host
A significant share of the sites or pages on a free hosting service are spammy.
❌ Structured data issue
Markup violates Google’s structured data guidelines, for example by describing hidden, irrelevant or misleading content.
❌ Unnatural links to your site
Google has found a pattern of artificial or manipulative links pointing to the site.
❌ Unnatural links from your site
Google has found a pattern of artificial or manipulative outbound links on the site.
❌ Thin content with little or no added value
Pages provide little unique value, such as thin affiliate pages, scraped content or doorway pages.
❌ Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects
Google is shown different content from visitors, or visitors are redirected somewhere unexpected.
❌ Major spam problems
The site uses aggressive spam tactics or has repeated or egregious spam-policy violations.
❌ Cloaked images
Images shown to Google differ from, or are obscured compared with, what visitors see.
❌ Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing
Pages hide text from visitors or repeat keywords excessively.
❌ AMP content mismatch
AMP content differs materially from its canonical page.
❌ Sneaky mobile redirects
Mobile visitors are secretly redirected to content that Google’s crawlers don’t see.
❌ Site reputation policy
Some third-party content on the site is inconsistent with Google’s site reputation policy.
These are just SOME of the manual actions you can see in Google Search Console when a quality rater has visited the site and made a determination.
Googles automated spam algorithms flag suspicious patterns, or the site is highlighted through user-submitted spam reports and routine quality sweeps.
#seo #seotips
— Daniel Foley Carter (@foley_seo) October 7, 2026
I manually started to go through the Google Webmaster Help Forums and picked out a bunch of recent threads:
- Major Spam Manual Action problem on my site is in ERROR. What to do?
- So i got the manual panalty on my website and i want to understand the reason
- Help with Manual Action: “Thin content with little or no added value”, despite removing 4,000 URLs
- Need clarification on Manual Action – Major spam problems affecting /blog/
- Need feedback: Cleaned up Scaled Content Abuse manual action for legaldev.in
- My website git hit by manual penalty by Google last month
- 3 reconsideration rejections despite 6K+ URL cleanup. Need expert guidance on remaining gaps.
- Entire Blog Section Disappeared from Google due to Manual Action Received for Spam Content
- Title: Major Spam Problems Manual Action on /blog/ – Need Help
- news.ks.ua: Transparency manual action, no outcomes for repeated reconsideration requests
- Subject: Pure Spam Manual Action – Reconsideration Rejected Again – Need Guidance
- Manual action "Major spam problems" on /blog/
So I asked both ChatGPT and Gemini to look through the forums and tell me if they think there is a spike in complaints. Both said yes, there are more complaints in the forums but not a super big spike.
I asked both to create charts and here is the Gemini one:
Here is what ChatGPT drew:
But the data looks different from each - so go AI!
In any event, are you seeing a spike in complaints about manual actions?
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help Forums.
