A Look into a Manual Review by Google

Feb 7, 2008 - 8:46 am 3 by

Apparently, SlightlyShadySEO is very shady. He noticed that his site was manually reviewed by Google and took the time to blog about it. He writes:

Manual reviews are Google’s awknowledgment that anything algorithmic will have flaws. ... The manual review I stumbled across today was one that appears to be centered around cloaking and [possibly] link spam.

By examining specific referrer URLs, he assumes that Google is doing certain searches based on webmaster spam reports or assumptions of cloaking. He's also concluded that since the visits were rather slow (and came from Google IPs), they had to have been done by humans employed by Google.

The entire post is an insightful read, and if SlightlyShadySEO is correct, is very enlightening about the process of manual reviews.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Microsoft Launches Smart Web Ads