SEO & digital marketing
Learn From Others’ Mistakes: Google Manual Actions and Recovery for Dealership Websites
How to check the Search Console Manual Actions report, which actions hit dealership websites, how to fix them and how to file a reconsideration request.
Quick answer
A manual action is a penalty a human reviewer at Google applies when pages break its spam policies; affected pages rank lower or drop out of results. Check the Manual Actions report in Search Console, fix every affected page, then request a review that explains the issue, your fixes and the outcome.
This article first ran in November 2020 as advice to learn from other businesses' SEO mistakes. It is now a recovery guide for dealer principals, general managers and whoever owns the dealership's Search Console account: how to tell whether Google has taken a manual action against your site, what each common action means for a dealer site, and how to fix it and ask for a review.
What a manual action is
Google's Manual actions report help page defines it directly: "Google issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's spam policies."
Three points from the same page matter most to a dealer:
- It is usually silent. "Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user." Shoppers see nothing; your leads just thin out.
- It can be partial or total. "If a site has a manual action, some or all of that site will not be shown in Google search results."
- Google tells you. "If your site is affected by a manual action, we will notify you in the Manual actions report and in the Search Console message center."
A manual action is the consequence. The causes are the tactics in Google's spam policies, which we cover in black hat SEO risks for dealerships. This article is about what to do once one has happened, or when you suspect it has.
How to check the Manual Actions report
You need access to the dealership's Google Search Console property. If nobody at the store has it, that is the first fix: the property should belong to the dealership, with vendors added as users.
- Sign in to Search Console and select the property for your website.
- Open the Manual actions report from the left-hand menu.
- Read the count at the top. Google says: "If your site has no manual actions, you'll see a green check mark and an appropriate message." If you see the check mark, your traffic problem has another cause (see the comparison below).
- Expand each action to see its type, a short description and the affected pages. Patterns look like
example.com/real-estate/*, meaning "some or all pages under the real-estate/ directory are affected", or "Affects all pages" for the whole site. - Check the Security issues report too. It is a separate report for hacked content, malware and phishing. Google explains that manual actions are "mostly attempts to manipulate our search index", while security issues are behavior "that could potentially harm a visitor or their computer".
- Check Search Console messages and the account owner's email, since Google also sends notices there.
Bought another store? Google covers this case: "If you recently bought a site that violated our spam policies before you owned it, fix the issues listed in this report, then let us know in your reconsideration request that you recently acquired the site". When you buy a dealership and keep its domain, check this report on day one.
Manual actions a dealer website could get
Google's report lists many action types, several of which apply mainly to news publishers or job sites. These are the ones a powersports or motorsports dealer site could plausibly see, with Google's description and the typical dealer cause.
| Manual action | What Google says | How it happens on a dealer site | The fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnatural links to your site | "a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site" | A past SEO vendor bought links or ran a link network | Remove what you can, disavow the rest, document both |
| Unnatural links from your site | "unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links on your site" | Paid "partner" links or link exchanges with other businesses | Remove the links or qualify them with rel="nofollow" or a more specific attribute |
| Thin content with little or no added value | Lists "Thin affiliate pages", "scraped content or low-quality guest blog posts" and "Doorways" | Dozens of town pages that differ only by name; copied vendor blog posts | Remove or merge the pages; build fewer, useful ones |
| Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing | "Some of your pages may contain hidden text or keyword stuffing" | Hidden town lists in the footer; titles and alt text stuffed with model names | Remove the hidden text and repeated words |
| Structured data issue | Markup "outside our structured data guidelines", including "Review written by the site or person providing the service" | Review stars marked up from the dealer's own testimonials; hidden markup | Fix or remove the markup |
| User-generated spam / Site abused with third-party spam | Spam "submitted by site visitors", typically in "forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles" | An old forum, blog comments or an internal search page filled with spam | Remove the spam, close or moderate the channel |
| Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects | Showing "different pages to users than are shown to Google", or redirecting users elsewhere | A hacked plugin, or a third-party script redirecting mobile visitors | Find and remove the code; check for hacking |
| Site reputation policy | "a portion of your site is inconsistent with our spam policy on site reputation" | Third-party "sponsored" content hosted to ride the dealer domain | Remove it, noindex it, or redo it as first-party content |
| Major spam problems | "aggressive spam techniques such as scaled content abuse, cloaking, and/or other repeated or egregious violations" | Mass-produced pages, often from a vendor package | Rebuild the affected areas; this is the hardest to recover |
The thin content row overlaps with copied content. Our guide to duplicate content on dealership websites explains which duplication is normal (OEM model descriptions, similar vehicle pages) and which is not.
Manual action or algorithmic drop?
This is the mistake we see others make most often, and the one the agency pages ranking for this topic skip: assuming every traffic drop is a penalty. Most are not. Google's guide to debugging drops in Google Search traffic lists the main causes as algorithmic updates, technical issues, security issues, spam issues, seasonality and changing interests, and site moves.
For a powersports store, seasonality alone can look like a disaster. Searches for snowmobiles, personal watercraft or side-by-sides rise and fall with the calendar. Google suggests filtering the Performance report to one query at a time and checking it in Google Trends "to understand if the drop was only for your website or throughout the web."
| Sign | Points to a manual action | Points to something else |
|---|---|---|
| Manual Actions report | Shows one or more issues | Green check mark |
| Notice from Google | Message in Search Console and email | None |
| How to fix it | Fix the issue, then request a review | No review to request; improve the site and wait |
| Shape of the drop | Specific pages or sections, or the whole site, drop out | Small position shifts, or a drop that matches last year's season |
| Timing | Often follows a vendor change or a link campaign | Matches a Google ranking update, a site migration, or a seasonal low |
| Technical checks | Pages are indexed but rank lower or not at all | Page indexing or Crawl stats reports show errors; a stray noindex; the site was down |
If the drop is algorithmic, Google says "there might not be anything fundamentally wrong with your content", and recommends avoiding "radical changes if your page is already performing well" after small position drops. For large drops it suggests a self-assessment of the whole site, and warns that recovery "could take several months". There is no reconsideration request for an algorithmic drop.
Recovery steps for a dealership website
Once the report confirms a manual action, work through it in this order. Keep a shared log from step one; you will need it for the request.
| Step | What to do | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Freeze changes | Pause any vendor work on the site, links or content until you know the cause | Date of the pause and who was told |
| 2. Read every action | Expand each one; note its type, description and affected URL patterns | Screenshot of the report |
| 3. Find the cause | Match the action to the practice behind it: vendor packages, old campaigns, plugins, forms | Contracts, invoices, change logs |
| 4. Fix all affected pages | "Fixing the issue on just some pages will not earn you a partial return to search results." Fix every action if you have several | List of URLs changed, removed or merged |
| 5. Clean up links (link actions only) | Export links from Search Console, ask site owners to remove or qualify bad links, then disavow what you could not remove | Outreach log, removed links, disavow file |
| 6. Make pages reachable | Affected pages "should not require a login, be behind a paywall, or be blocked by robots.txt or a noindex directive" | URL Inspection results |
| 7. Request review | Select Request Review in the Manual actions report and describe your fixes | Copy of the request text |
| 8. Wait, then watch | Don't resubmit while a request is open; track impressions and leads by page | Google's emails; monthly Search Console export |
On link cleanup, Google is specific: "Blindly adding all backlinks to the disavow file is not considered a good-faith effort, and will not be enough to make your reconsideration request successful." It also warns: "Make sure that you don't disavow organic links to your site."
Writing the reconsideration request
Google says a good request does three things:
- "Explains the exact quality issue on your site."
- "Describes the steps you've taken to fix the issue."
- "Documents the outcome of your efforts."
For a dealer site, a request built on that structure might cover: what the vendor or past campaign did and when it stopped; the URLs removed, merged or rewritten (with examples of bad content removed and good content added, which Google asks for in several action types); for link actions, the links removed and why others could not be; and what you changed so it will not happen again, such as owning the Search Console property and requiring a monthly change log from vendors. If you bought the site, say so.
Be factual and short. Do not blame Google or promise rankings to yourself.
On timing, Google says: "Most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, although in some cases, such as link-related reconsideration requests, it may take longer than usual". You will get an email when the request arrives and another when the review is complete. "Please don't resubmit your request before you get a decision on any outstanding requests."
If the action is revoked, rankings do not return on a set schedule. The pages are eligible again; they still have to earn their positions.
Learning from others' mistakes
The pattern behind most manual actions on small business sites is the same: someone sold a shortcut, the business did not know what was done in its name, and nobody was watching Search Console. Three habits prevent most of it:
- Own your accounts. Domain, Search Console, Analytics and Business Profile in the dealership's name.
- Check monthly. A five-minute look at the Manual actions, Security issues and Performance reports. Our guide to tracking SEO results with Google Search Console covers the routine.
- Vet vendors. Ask what they will change and how they build links. Our black hat SEO risk guide has the questions. For everyday errors that are not spam at all, see common powersports SEO mistakes.
Rankings only matter if the leads they bring get answered. A recovered page that produces a web lead nobody calls back is still a lost sale. PSX Ascend's certified powersports dealer websites are connected to the powersports CRM.
You can also see the same certified dealership websites on our sister site, PSXDigital's certified dealership websites page.
Sources
- Google Search Console Help, Manual actions report.
- Google Search Central, Debugging drops in Google Search traffic.
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search.