Restore / Research / Remediation Checklist Remediation Checklist Manual action remediation checklist. Per-category steps. The evidence shape Google's review team requires.
Each manual-action category has a documented remediation requirement and a specific shape of evidence Google's review team needs to approve the reconsideration request. Partial remediation across the affected surface is the most common rejection cause. The checklist below covers the categories and the per-category evidence package.
The universal phases across every category
Every manual-action remediation runs through three phases regardless of category. Audit: pull the Manual Actions report, identify the flagged category, inventory every affected URL across the full affected surface, verify Googlebot accessibility per URL (no noindex, no paywall, no robots.txt block, no canonical pointing elsewhere). Remediate: execute the per-category fix across every affected URL with per-URL before-and-after evidence captured throughout. Submit: author the reconsideration request to the three-element structure (exact quality issue, specific steps taken per URL, outcome documentation), attach the per-category evidence package, file through Search Console.
The first phase is where most engagements determine whether the eventual request will be approved. Partial remediation is the most common rejection cause; missing affected URLs from the inventory cascades into a partial fix that the review team's sampling catches. The audit is the load-bearing phase.
Per-category remediation steps
unnatural-links-to-site. Identify the manipulative inbound links from the link profile. Run documented removal outreach with dated requests and recorded responses. Compile the disavow file (UTF-8 .txt, max 100,000 lines, 2MB, domain: prefix where the whole referring domain is the issue) against the residual that could not be removed. The disavow service runs the file authoring.
unnatural-links-from-site. Audit the site's outbound link surface. Apply rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored", or rel="ugc" attributes per Google's published attribute taxonomy. Remove links that should not be there. The outbound link surface is the operator's responsibility rather than the referring sites'.
thin-content-with-little-added-value. Inventory the thin-content pages. Delete the pages that have no path to substantive content or rewrite them to actually add value. Per-URL before-and-after evidence in the request package.
scaled-content-abuse. Delete the unhelpful content surface produced at low-effort scale. Audit the editorial pipeline so the pattern does not return. The remediation engagement is at scaled content abuse recovery.
site-reputation-abuse. Remove or noindex the third-party commercial content directories. Restore close editorial oversight on what publishes under the host's authority. Enforcement began May 5, 2024. The remediation engagement is at site reputation abuse recovery.
expired-domain-abuse. Remove the repurposed low-quality content from the historical domain. Manual actions are issued for active cases; the algorithmic component largely neutralizes the tactic at the link-signal level when ownership changes are detected. The engagement is at expired domain abuse recovery.
cloaking, sneaky-redirects, sneaky-mobile-redirects, cloaked-images, AMP-content-mismatch. Remove the conditional serving logic at server, CDN, or script level. Verify parity per URL with rendered-DOM captures and mobile-emulator captures. The remediation engagements are at cloaking remediation and sneaky redirect fix.
The evidence package per category
Link cases. Outreach log (dated requests, recorded responses), disavow file (authored to Google's spec), per-URL before-and-after status. Without the outreach log the request reads as evading the work; the review team rejects on that basis.
Content cases. Per-URL deletion log or rewrite captures. The review team samples across the affected URL inventory; the evidence has to cover the full surface because the sample can land anywhere in it.
Technical-routing cases. Rendered-DOM parity captures from Googlebot UA and from standard user-agent mobile/desktop sessions. Documentation of the conditional-serving source removed (script tag, server rule, CDN edge logic) per URL.
Markup cases. Schema audit, corrected markup captures, validation against the Schema.org / Rich Results test surface.
The reconsideration request authoring step is at reconsideration request. The per-category engagement that runs the remediation is at the manual-action removal service. The parent indexation hub is Google deindex. The diagnostic in front of every remediation route runs at the Restore SEO penalty removal program.
What operators ask when working through the per-category checklist.
- 01.
What is the universal remediation principle across categories?
Fix the underlying issue across all affected URLs. Partial remediation is the most common rejection cause. The audit catalogs every affected URL before the remediation starts; the reconsideration request documents the fix per-URL with the evidence shape the category requires.
- 02.
What evidence does Google's review team expect?
Depends on category. Unnatural-links cases: outreach log with dated requests, recorded responses, and the disavow file authored to spec. Cloaking and sneaky-redirects cases: before-and-after rendered-DOM parity captures per URL. Thin-content and scaled-content cases: deletion or rewrite logs per URL. Structured-data manipulation cases: markup audit and corrected schema captures. Hacked-site cases: incident-response evidence (the surface lives at the Security Issues report not the Manual Actions report; see Search Console security issues vs manual action).
- 03.
Why does Googlebot accessibility matter during the review?
The review team verifies the remediation by recrawling the affected URLs. noindex meta or HTTP headers, robots.txt blocks, paywalls, or canonical redirects pointing the remediated page elsewhere prevent the verification. The request stalls until the accessibility is restored.
- 04.
How long does the review take per category?
Days to weeks. Link-related cases historically take longer because the outreach evidence requires manual verification per documented contact attempt. Content-quality cases and technical-routing cases tend to resolve faster, but the review team does not commit to a timeline.
- 05.
What if the reconsideration is rejected?
The rejection cause is named in the Search Console response. Common rejection causes: partial remediation across the affected surface, missing outreach documentation, vague rebuilding language, accessibility blocks during review. We re-audit, fix the gap, and refile against the original category. The manual-action removal service engagement covers the re-audit and refile.
If you have a manual action in Search Console and you need the per-category remediation scoped against the documented evidence the review team requires, book the diagnostic.
We pull the Manual Actions report and the affected-URL inventory, scope the per-category remediation across the full affected surface, compile the evidence package the category requires, and author the reconsideration request to the three-element structure.