Google penalties, algorithm drops and how to recover

Short answer. Open Search Console. If the Manual Actions report lists something, you have a penalty: fix every affected page, make them reachable, and request a review. If it is empty, you do not have a penalty; you have a technical fault, a security issue, an algorithm update, seasonality or a change in what people search for. Check the Search Status Dashboard for a dated update, compare impressions with clicks, and compare with the same weeks last year before you change anything. Details and sources below.

First, find out what actually happened

Google’s own guide to debugging drops in Search traffic names the causes you should rule out, and gives a first test: if impressions and clicks both fall, investigate the causes below; if impressions hold but clicks fall, the problem is usually your title or snippet, not your ranking.

Two London stories illustrate the first and last rows. A Croydon plumber’s "traffic collapse" turned out to be a consent banner update that stopped analytics firing; Search Console showed clicks unchanged. A Soho bar lost half its impressions in January, as it had the January before, because fewer people search for cocktail bars after New Year. Neither needed a recovery plan. Both nearly bought one.

Manual actions: what they are and how you are told

A manual action is a human reviewer at Google deciding that pages on your site break the spam policies. Google notifies you in the Manual Actions report and the Search Console message centre; if you have never verified your site in Search Console, you will not have been told, which is the first thing to fix. The report names the type, says whether it affects some pages or the whole site, and lets you expand each action to see sample affected pages.

One useful limit from Google’s documentation: a structured data manual action removes rich-result eligibility but does not change the page’s ranking in web search. If your drop is large, that is not the cause, even if the report shows it.

Algorithm updates: the drop that is not a penalty

Google’s page on core updates says they are significant, broad changes made several times a year, announced on the Search Status Dashboard, and that they "don’t target specific sites or individual web pages". A page that drops has not been punished; other pages are now judged to serve the searcher better. That distinction matters because the recovery is different. There is nothing to "remove", no review to request and no reviewer to persuade.

Google’s guidance on timing is blunt. Improvements can show quickly, but it "could take several months" for its systems to confirm that a site’s content has improved, and if nothing changes after a few months "that could mean waiting until the next core update". Anyone selling a dated recovery from a core update is selling something Google says cannot be dated.

What Google asks you to do instead is to assess the site as a whole against its helpful content guidance, including the "Who, How and Why" questions: who created the content, how it was produced, and why it exists. It asks you to be objective or to get unaffiliated people to assess it, to avoid quick fixes, and to treat deleting content as a last resort.

Get your free SEO auditTraffic dropped and you are not sure why? The free SEO audit includes the diagnosis above, done by a person, with the three fixes that matter within two working days.

Diagnosing a drop, step by step

1. Fix the date. Find the first day clicks fell in the Performance report, and check analytics for the same day so you know whether the two agree.
2. Check the Manual Actions report and the Security Issues report. If either has an entry, go to the relevant recovery section below.
3. Check the Search Status Dashboard for a ranking update that started within a few days of your date.
4. Compare impressions with clicks. Impressions steady and clicks down points to titles, snippets or a new result feature above you, not to ranking.
5. Segment by page and by query. A drop confined to one template (all product pages, all borough pages) points to a technical or content cause in that template. A drop across everything points to a site-wide cause.
6. Compare with the same weeks last year. Seasonality is the most common "penalty" we are asked about.
7. Crawl the site and check the Page indexing and Crawl stats reports for a change that matches the date: a noindex rule, a robots change, a redesign, a 5xx pattern.
8. Check for recent link activity in the Links report: a sudden surge of new linking domains you did not earn is a warning sign.
9. Only now decide what kind of drop it is, and only then plan the recovery.

Recovering from a manual action

The Manual Actions help page sets out the process, and it is the process, however an agency dresses it up. Expand the action to see which pages are affected. Fix the issue on every affected page, not a sample, and fix every listed action if there are several. Make sure Google can reach the fixed pages: not behind a login or a paywall, not blocked by robots.txt, not noindexed. Then select Request Review and explain the quality issue, the steps you took and the outcome. Google says most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, and asks you not to resubmit while a request is pending. The reconsideration request guidance adds that the explanation should be specific and honest about what was done.

For link-based actions, the order is remove, then disavow. Contact the sites you can and have the links removed or set to nofollow; document every attempt, because the reviewer wants to see effort. For the links you cannot remove, use the disavow tool, and read its rules first. Google calls it an advanced feature that should only be used with caution, says most sites do not need it because Google can usually assess which links to trust, and says to use it only when you have a considerable number of spammy or artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. The file is plain text, one URL or domain per line, with a domain: prefix to disavow a whole domain, a maximum of 100,000 lines and 2MB, and it "can take a few weeks" to be incorporated as Google recrawls.

For content-based actions (thin content, keyword stuffing, hidden text), the fix is to make the pages genuinely useful or to remove them. The thirty templated borough pages become five pages with real local content, or they go. The hidden footer is deleted. Then the reconsideration request says exactly that, with before-and-after examples.

Recovering after a core update

There is no request to file and no reviewer to satisfy, so the work is content and site quality, and the measure of success is the next update. A practical plan, built on Google’s guidance:

1. List the pages and query groups that fell. Then list the pages that did not. The contrast usually tells you which content Google stopped preferring.
2. Look at who now ranks for the lost queries and read their pages as a customer would. Be honest about whether they answer the question better, show more first-hand experience, or are simply clearer.
3. Run the "Who, How and Why" test on the fallen pages. Is it clear who wrote them and why they are qualified? Is the content first-hand, or a rewrite of what already ranked? Does the page exist to help the reader or to catch a search?
4. Consolidate rather than multiply. Ten overlapping posts on "SEO for dentists" become one thorough page with a clear author. Google’s guidance treats removal as a last resort, so merge and improve before you delete.
5. Fix the technical hygiene that the update may have exposed: speed, mobile usability, intrusive interstitials, indexing of thin pages. Our technical SEO service covers this layer.
6. Stop producing the kind of content that fell. A Camden Town bar whose "best X in London" posts were generated at scale and lost everything should not write ten more; Google’s spam policies name scaled content abuse specifically.
7. Measure against the baseline at the next announced update, not next week.

This is slow and it is unglamorous, which is why there is a market for alternatives. None of them is in Google’s documentation.

Security issues and hacked sites

A hacked site can lose traffic faster than any penalty, because Google warns users before they click. The Security Issues report lists what Google found: malware, deceptive pages, harmful downloads, or hacked content such as injected spam pages and redirects. The recovery is to take the site offline or into maintenance, clean it completely (including the backdoor the attacker left), update every plugin, theme and password, then request a review from the report. Hacked WordPress sites in London small businesses are, in our experience, the most common urgent call we take, and they are almost always months out of date.

What not to do

• Do not buy a "penalty removal" package with a promised date. Google says reconsideration takes days or weeks and that core update recovery may wait for the next update; nobody can shorten either.
• Do not disavow everything. Google says most sites do not need the tool and that it should be used with caution; disavowing good links to be safe removes value you earned.
• Do not move to a new domain to escape. Redirecting carries the same links and the same content with you, and starting fresh throws away everything that still works.
• Do not redesign or migrate during a recovery. You will not be able to tell what changed what.
• Do not delete content as a first move. Google’s core update guidance treats removal as a last resort; improve or consolidate first.
• Do not stop monitoring once the chart recovers. Keep Search Console verified, read the message centre, and check the Manual Actions and Security Issues reports monthly.

How we approach a drop

We start with the table at the top of this guide and we do not quote for "recovery" until we know which row you are in. For many London businesses that first diagnosis is the whole job, and it is what the free SEO audit does: a person reads your Search Console with you and writes down what happened and the three things to do about it, within two working days. Where there is real work to do, it becomes a defined project inside our SEO service, with the reconsideration request or the content plan as the deliverable, and no promises about dates that Google itself does not make. Not ready to talk? Score your own site in five minutes.