• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Google / Google: Manual Reviews Cannot Lift Algorithmic Search Penalty

Google: Manual Reviews Cannot Lift Algorithmic Search Penalty

March 30, 2018 at 5:24 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

If you are hoping Google can do something on their back end to lift an algorithmic penalty, you are out of luck.  Google does not have something that can remove an algorithmic penalty – such as from impacted by Panda, Penguin, or the many other algo signals – so a site will rank better in the search results.  Google has said this on numerous occasions, but the question still pops up.

It came up again during the Reddit AMA John Mueller did this week.

There’s no “reset button” for a domain, we don’t even have that internally, so a manual review wouldn’t change anything there.

The fact there is no reset button isn’t a surprise.  For manual actions, those can be removed by Google, but algorithmic penalties cannot. If a site ends up being demoted in the organic search results that shouldn’t be, Google prefers to deal with those situations by adjusting the algo to fix the issue, so it fixes not only the one site but any others that were caught with the same algo change.

On the same note, triggering a manual action won’t fix algo issues even when the reconsideration request is accepted.

He does continue and says that if the site has a long history of issues, it can sometimes be easier to move to a different domain rather than go through the process of cleaning it up.

If there’s a lot of bad history associated with that, you either have to live with it, clean it up as much as possible, or move to a different domain. I realize that can be a hassle, but it’s the same with any kind of business, cleaning up a bad name/reputation can be a lot of work, and it’s hard to say ahead of time if it’ll be worth it in the end.

This is something a lot of SEOs recommend as well, for domains that have been spammed.  Clean slate domains are almost always easier to rank than ones with spam baggage to deal with first, either historically or as part of the current site, especially since quality improvements can take months to be reflected in the search results.  And for new sites with ranking issues, checking the history of a domain is one of the first things SEOs check.

But Google can’t simply “press a button” and remove an algorithmic penalty from a site.  So if your site is affected in the search results by one of the many Google algorithms, the only solution is to improve your site to be the kind of site the algo wants to reward with higher rankings.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, SEO

Sign up for our newsletter


Comments

  1. Volker Kleinhenz says

    March 30, 2018 at 10:59 pm

    I wonder what “move to a different domain” exactly means. Does it mean abandoning the old domain altogether or 301 redirecting the old domain to the new domain?

  2. Geoff Lord says

    March 31, 2018 at 3:00 am

    Hi There

    I was badly effected by the recent algorithm changes on the 9th March seeing my site sink from a 13.5% position on Semrush to a 3% position. I did not take any action to resolve this as I assumed that it was a penalty as had been reported widely. Howver, in frustration on the 28th I did wrote a fresh articles and submitted it to google console requestiong indexing, and posted the link to several social sites. Today on the 30th March my site has returned to the 13’5% position it had previously held for many months.

    So it would appear that google is still rewarding fresh content, or is this just a one off glitch ?

    geoff Lord
    gastricbandfrance.co.uk

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
March 2023
MTWTFSS
« Aug  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in