Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that he doesn't have rights or clearance to apply manual actions to web sites. That means, he is not able to manually penalize a web site. It does not mean he doesn't know the people who can do that for him. Gary did add months ago that he does have some better things in his tool belt that some other Googlers.
Here is his tweet:
I only get the death threats for manual actions, I can't actually do them... Fortunately
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) June 21, 2017
Oh yes, he does get death threats, many Googlers get threatened, heck, I often get threats and I don't have any tools. :)
In any event, it is good to know that Gary can't give my site a manual action. I mean, I bet he will want to after reading this post and maybe 50% of the other stories here. :)
Forum discussion at Twitter.
