There seems to be an unusually large number of manual actions being sent out by Google this week. I am not sure if they busted yet another link network or spam network or if it is just that they are trying to clear out the spam queue before the holidays. :)
But I am seeing a larger number of people complaining to me on Twitter and via email (as well as some public complaints in the forums) with complaints of receiving these manual actions over the past 24 hours. We even covered some cases yesterday when we documented the new terminology used in these notices.
Here are some tweets:
@glenngabe @rustybrick Some serious manual penalties being handed out at the very least.
— Jane's Best Fitness (@janesfitness) December 9, 2015Seeing more Pure Spam questions in the Google help forums lately. This one was interesting: https://t.co/vfXeYPUXK7
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) December 8, 2015@rustybrick my website is penalized by manual action so how can and how much time it will take to recover
— Harish Pareek (Hary) (@harypareek) December 9, 2015And yes, there are complaints in the Google Webmaster Help forums, that is just one of many complaints.
There are some others saying their rankings dropped and they have yet to see a manual action. But I suspect they will get one soon, as Google told us there won't be a Penguin update yet, by the years end, which also implies no other spam algorithm updates by years end.
So if you see people complaining about manual actions, add the details to the comments. Maybe they busted a link network - if we can get to the bottom of it, it will help those people disavow and remove those links and recover.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help & Twitter.
