After Google manual actions expire, algorithms may handle some of those site penalties

Google has confirmed again that manual actions, human-driven search penalties, can expire over time.

With Google manual actions, real people at Google apply penalties to websites that are not complying with Google’s Webmaster guidelines. Google launched a manual actions viewer in Google Search Console in 2013 to communicate human-added penalties to your website.

John Mueller, a Google webmaster trends analysts, said Friday on Twitter that sometimes manual actions can be replaced by an algorithmic penalty. We have known for many years that manual actions can expire. Often after a manual action expires, Google will reissue it if the violation hasn’t been addressed. But sometimes, John said, a manual action will expire and won’t renew because an algorithm has taken over.

John said, “Often things change over the years, so what might have required manual intervention to solve/improve back then, might be handled better algorithmically nowadays.”

Here is the tweet:

So, for example, a manual action for bad links pointing to your site is no longer needed because the Google Penguin algorithm has detected the bad links and addressed the penalty automatically.

Manual actions are used specifically where algorithms can’t do the job. When new algorithms are designed to take care of the job, those manual actions from humans are no longer needed.

For more on Google penalties, see our ultimate guide on Google penalties.