Recently I was working with a UK based online business to resolve a manual web spam action taken against its website. The website in question had a partial match notification (this can be checked in Google Webmaster Tools => Search Traffic => Manual Actions). This is of course a familiar one that many of you would have already seen, where the message reads:

Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on the site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking a targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole.

As we were resolving the issue, everything seemed to progress exactly like many of the cases that we had worked on in the past. You would think so, right? Well, as I have learned working in Search Engine Marketing for so many years, you should be prepared for unexpected surprises all the time.

And this is exactly what happened:

The campaign started with the usual steps anyone would take starting from a full backlink audit, analysis of affected pages to a manual review and link removal processes. However, as we were preparing to submit the first reconsideration request, the manual action notification disappeared from Google Webmaster Tools. We did all the standard checks, including access level and site messages, but nothing was there to give us a clue of what had happened.

This wasn’t something we had seen before and we started asking questions. Was it a technical glitch? Did Google suddenly realise that it had made a mistake in applying the manual action in the first place? Did Google review the website, found we had removed so many links and decided to revoke the manual action silently?

We decided to go ahead and apply for a reconsideration request thinking that Google would fix the issue in the process of reviewing the reconsideration request anyway. However, we quickly realised that we were unable to do so, since the the REQUEST A REVIEW button is only available if you have a Manual Actions notification showing in Google Webmaster Tools.

I guess it is Google’s way of stopping people using the REQUEST A REVIEW button for any kind of random request. I can see Google’s point of view here, as many people will use any available option they have at their disposal to try to find an answer when they face a desperate situation: something I see all the time with website owners and SEOers alike.

We decided to take a step back from the case and give it a little bit of thought. Originally, we thought we knew everything about manual webspam action and we prided ourselves on developing an efficient process that allowed us to turn Google manual action removals in three months or less. With a bit of research and digging however, we learnt that we were missing an important piece in the jigsaw of Google’s manual action penalties. This was that:

Google manual web spam actions have a time limit and they eventually expire!

Here is a discussion form on Google Webmaster Help, where Matt Cutts clearly states that manual web spam actions eventually expire.

How long do Google manual action penalties last for?

The length of a manual penalty could be 30 days or longer, depending on how severe it is. According to Cutts’ video below, hidden text violation warrants a 30 day manual action to be applied to your website, and after that it would expire. However, if you are doing something more severe such as cloaking or some really malicious stuff, then the penalty will last for a longer period of time but eventually will also expire.

Matt Cutts Video - Manual Actions Expire

Do I still need to do anything when manual web spam actions expire?

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer however, is that even when Google penalties expire you shouldn’t sweep them under the carpet and assume they will never come back again, particularly if you want to have your website presented optimally in Google search results. It is always possible that manual actions are applied again if the reason for the original manual action is still relevant. This is according to John Mueller’s answer on a Google Webmaster Help discussion (see comment on 19/07/2012 from JohnMu here).

What does this mean in practical terms?

In practical terms, this means that you should still do the following three things if the Google Manual Actions notification disappears in Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) and you think the penalty has expired:

1. Resolve the issue. If it was an unnatural links message you received, then make a concerted effort to remove those links. Obviously if it is some other issue such as “Hidden Text” that caused the problem, then make sure you resolve that.
2. Submit a disavow file if it was unnatural links that got you into trouble in the first place.
3. Make detailed records of the work you have done ready in case you have to submit a reconsideration request in the future. In the case of the unnatural links issue, you would record the collated backlinks, flagged ones for removal and details of contact attempts you have made to webmasters in order to remove or change those links.

I hope you find this article useful. Please feel free to ask questions or comment on your specific experiences below.