What Is the Manual Actions and Security Issues Reporting in Google Search Console?
Two reports most businesses will never see anything in. That is the expected outcome rather than good fortune. It is also exactly what makes them worth checking, because they are the one category of problem you can rule out definitively in a minute.
Empty Is The Normal State
If you have arrived here worried, the likeliest outcome is that both reports say nothing and you can stop worrying in about a minute. The overwhelming majority of sites have no manual action and no security notice. That is the expected condition rather than a lucky escape.
Why people expect otherwise. The word penalty.
It gets used loosely for any drop in traffic, so a business whose enquiries fell assumes it has been punished. Most falls have nothing to do with either of these reports.
How rare a manual action is. Genuinely rare.
Somebody at Google has to have reviewed the site and decided something. That does not happen to ordinary businesses doing ordinary work, however untidy the site is.
What empty means. Definitely nothing.
Not probably nothing. This reporting is where an action would be announced with its reason, so silence here is a definite answer rather than an absence of evidence.
What empty does not rule out. An algorithmic fall.
Being ranked differently by systems that assess everybody is not a penalty and is never announced. That is a separate investigation entirely. Confusing the two wastes months.
Why the page exists at all then. The minute is worth spending.
Because when either report does show something, it changes everything about what you should do next. Both are urgent in a way the rest of this reporting is not.
Which Makes This The First Thing To Check
Almost nothing in search can be confirmed or eliminated definitively. This can. That makes it the correct first step in any investigation into a drop, before anybody starts theorising about updates or competitors.
Why definiteness is unusual here. Everything else is inference.
Whether an update affected you, whether a competitor improved, whether demand fell. All of those are arguments from evidence. A manual action is stated, with a reason, in writing.
The order to investigate a drop in. Rule out, then narrow.
Check these two reports. Then confirm the drop is real rather than a comparison artefact. Then look at whether it is concentrated or general, which the decline guide covers.
What this saves you. A wasted fortnight.
Businesses spend weeks rewriting content on the assumption they have been penalised, when the reporting would have told them in a minute that they have not.
How to make sure you would notice. Alerts and a weekly glance.
Both categories trigger notification, so make sure those emails reach a person. Our guide to using the tool covers that, including that alerts arrive after the fact rather than as a warning.
Who should check it. Whoever holds the property.
Which should be the business rather than a supplier, so a notice arriving during a gap between agencies still reaches somebody who cares.
What A Manual Action Means Here
Somebody reviewed the site and applied something, with a reason given and a route to having it reconsidered. That is the shape of it. Why they get applied and how recovery works is a subject of its own and our material on risky practices owns it.
What the report gives you. A reason and a scope.
What the problem is considered to be, plus whether it applies to the whole site or to specific pages. Both matter, because a partial action explains a partial drop.
Why the reason matters most. It tells you what to undo.
Unlike an algorithmic fall, you are not guessing. The stated reason is the brief for the work, which makes this the most tractable serious problem in search.
What causes them, in general terms. Deliberate practices.
Something done to the site to game results rather than to serve customers. Frequently by a previous supplier, occasionally years earlier, sometimes without the owner ever knowing it was happening.
What not to do. Panic or ignore it.
Neither helps. It will not clear itself and it is not the end of the business either. It is a defined problem with a defined route out.
Where the recovery work sits. Our risky practices material.
That covers what each category means, what undoing it properly involves and why a review submitted too early makes everything slower.
Security Issues
Separate reporting tells you if Google believes your site has been compromised or is serving something harmful to visitors. This is not a search problem with a search fix. It deserves a different reaction from everything else in this cluster.
What it covers. Three broad situations.
Content injected by somebody who got into the site. Pages set up to deceive visitors into handing over information. Files being served that would harm a visitor's device.
What it looks like to your customers. A warning screen.
Where a notice is applied, people trying to visit may be shown an interstitial warning them off. That is a conversion problem, a reputation problem and a search problem at once.
How sites get compromised. Usually neglect.
Out of date software, an abandoned plugin, a weak password or a hosting account with old access still enabled. Rarely anything sophisticated and rarely targeted at you personally.
Why it is urgent. It is actively harming people.
Every hour the site serves something malicious is an hour your customers are at risk. That is a different order of urgency from an untidy indexing report.
What to do first. Get the right person.
A developer or your host rather than a search specialist, which is what block five is about.
A Security Notice Is Not An SEO Problem
A compromised site is a business and customer safety matter first. The search consequences are real and they are downstream of the actual problem, which is that somebody else has access to your website.
Who to call. Not us, first.
A developer or your hosting provider. This needs somebody who can look at server logs, file changes and access records, which is a different discipline from search work.
What matters more than the warning. The data.
Somebody with access to your site may have access to whatever it holds, including customer details and anything submitted through your forms. That question comes before the search question.
The mistake that wastes the effort. Cleaning the symptom.
Deleting the injected pages and requesting a review, without finding how the access happened, means it comes back. Frequently within days, at which point the review has failed and the site is compromised again.
The order that works. Find, close, clean, harden, then ask.
Find the entry point. Close it. Remove what was added. Change credentials and update everything. Only then request a review.
What we will not publish. A shortcut.
There is no responsible version of this page that explains how to clear the warning without dealing with the cause, so we have not written one. Our technical material covers keeping a site maintained so this does not happen.
Do Not Request A Review Before Fixing
The commonest reason a review fails is that it was submitted before the problem was genuinely dealt with. A failed review is not neutral either. It costs you the wait, then you begin again from the back of the queue.
Why people submit early. Understandable urgency.
The site is losing money every day, so anything that might shorten the wait feels worth trying. Submitting early lengthens it rather than shortening it.
What a review actually assesses. Whether it is fixed.
Somebody looks at whether the stated problem still exists. If it does, whether you intended to fix it makes no difference to the outcome.
What to include when you do submit. Specifics.
What was wrong, what you changed, when, plus what has been put in place to stop it recurring. A vague submission invites a slower and less favourable reading.
What we will not tell you. How long it takes.
Nobody outside Google knows, it varies by category and anybody quoting you a number of days is guessing. Nor can anybody promise you an outcome.
What to do while waiting. Nothing dramatic.
Do not rebuild the site, change the address or start submitting repeatedly. Keep trading, keep the fix in place and wait it out.
Inherited Problems
A site bought, taken over or inherited can carry either of these, applied years before you had anything to do with it. That is not your fault. It is still your problem. The reporting is the only place you will find out.
How it happens. Nobody checks.
Domains and sites change hands without anybody looking at this reporting. A business buys what looks like an established site and acquires a stated reason it will have to answer for.
Why it can sit undiscovered. No property, no notice.
If the previous owner held the property and the new owner never verified one, nothing announces the problem. The site simply underperforms for reasons nobody can explain.
What to do about it. Same process, plus context.
Establish what was done, undo it properly and say so in the review, including that ownership has changed. That context is relevant and worth stating clearly.
What to do next time. Check before buying.
Verify the property, read this reporting and look at the search history before money changes hands. It takes an afternoon and it is the cheapest due diligence available.
Where to look next. The wider triage.
Common errors covers everything else this tool reports and what deserves attention. Everything sits on the Google Search Console guide.
One minute
rules it out
or confirms
it entirely.
Almost nothing in search can be settled definitively. This can. If the reporting is empty, no action has been applied and the drop you are investigating has a different cause, which is worth establishing before anybody rewrites a page or buys a recovery service.
How we work through a drop:
If a supplier offers to lift a penalty for a fee without telling you the stated reason, that is the conversation to walk away from.
Every guide.
One tool.
Getting set up and verified, using the reports properly, the performance and indexing data, finding what is broken, finding what is being passed over and turning any of it into work worth doing.
