What is a Manual Action?
A manual action or penalty is when a member of Google’s team reviews your website and penalizes it for going against best practices. Attempts to exploit our search index are resolved by most manual actions. Most of the problems mentioned would result in pages or sites being ranked lower or removed without any visual hint to the user from the search results.
Recent Manual Action Added by Google
Below are the new manual actions listed for Google Discover and Google News.
1. Discover policy violation: Adult-themed content
On your website, Google has found content that seems to violate adult content policy because it involves nudity, sexual acts, sexually provocative behaviors, or sexually explicit material.
2. News and Discovery policy violation: Dangerous content
On your website, Google has found content that seems to breach hazardous content policy because it includes content that may directly encourage serious and immediate harm to humans or animals.
3. News and Discovery policy violation: Harassing content
Google has found content on your website that seems to breach harassing content policy because it includes content that is harassing, bullying, or threatening, including but not limited to, that could target someone out for malicious harassment, threaten someone with serious harm, sexualize someone in an unwanted way, reveal someone else's private information that could be used to carry out threats.
4. News and Discovery policy violation: Hateful content
On your site, Google has found material that appears to breach hateful content policy with hate-inciting content.
5. News and Discovery policy violation: Manipulated media
On your site, Google has found material that appears to break manipulated media policy. They do not accept the content of audio, video, or picture that has been manipulated to deceive, defraud, or mislead by creating a representation of acts or events that have not taken place verifiably and that would cause a rational individual to have a fundamentally different understanding
6. News and Discovery policy violation: Medical content
Google has found content on your website that appears to breach policy on medical content because it includes content specifically intended to provide commercial medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
7. Discovery policy violation: Misleading content
On your website, Google has found content that tends to breach misleading content policy and misleads users to engage with it by promising a subject or story that is not reflected in the content.
8. News and Discovery policy violation: Sexually explicit content
On your website, Google has found material that appears to breach sexually explicit content policy because it involves explicit sexual imagery or videos specifically intended to induce sexual excitement.
9. News and Discovery policy violation: Terrorist content
On your website, Google has found content that seems to breach policy on terrorist content and encourages terrorist or militant activities, like recruiting, promoting violence, or celebrating terrorist attacks.
10. News policy violation: Transparency
Google has found data that intends to violate transparency policy. The website users want to trust and appreciate who publishes the material they consume and knowledge about those who have published posts.
11. News and Discovery policy violation: Violence and gore content
On your website, Google has found data that seems to break policy against violence and gore because it includes content that incites or glorifies violence. For the sake of disgusting others, Google also doesn't allow particularly graphic or violent content.
12. News and Discovery policy violation: Vulgar language and profanity
Google has found material on your web that, since it includes free obscenities or profanities, appears to breach vulgar language and profanity policy.
Here are some key points to keep in mind to get featured on Google Discover:
Create Good Quality & Engaging Content
Website owners must focus on creating high-quality content and engaging content for surfacing in Google Discover. All you have to do is create better content than everyone else. To create this type of content, you must research your audience, competitors, and the industry.
Think of ways of encouraging your users to engage with your content. Undoubtedly quality is essential, in terms of the content you write (comply with Google’s content quality policies) and topics you cover.
Make sure you have a powerful headline with better keywords that can draw the attention of your audience easily. Create content that serves relevant, and engaging content.
Create Content on Trending & Evergreen Topics
Focus on creating a mix of content i.e. fresh, newsworthy, content, and evergreen topics, this not only helps in pulling up in Discover but also builds trust amongst your audience. It is crucial to add both sorts of pieces in your editorial content with room to update evergreen content from time to time.
Content on trendy topics do well on Google because it keeps users updated. Your company must be in the first position of the biggest and latest trends in your sector so that you can capitalize on the content you make.
Produce Content on Timely Sensitivity
Google Discover posts content that is trending, newsworthy, and are focused on popular subjects. This type of content is the best bet at being pulled into the user’s Discover feeds. Based on your searches, Discover will provide the latest and trendy news that you want to read.
Add Some Visuals in your Content
Customers get more attracted to visual content. It looks most appealing and eye-catching in Google Discover and has maximum chances that the audience will click on it. Make sure to have a high-quality image or video that is large enough to get your content featured on Google Discover. Google suggested that the image should be at least 1,200 px wide.
The quality of the content automatically increases when you will add relevant videos. Posting visuals on your content will help you to engage your audience as it will generate more engagement and rankings.
Make sure the content includes the highest quality pictures, graphs, charts, videos, and infographics. You can also use big pictures, as bigger images work better on Google Discover feeds.
Remember E.A.T
Earlier, Google has mentioned the importance of E.A.T, especially in SEO based topics. E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness that helps you outshine easily in Google Discover. On the first point, Google wants everyone to create trustworthy content, where site authority builds this type of content.
In this feature, you have to make sure your content is trustworthy and answerable to the questions of your audience. Let your audience know that you are the authority on this particular content.
What to do Next?
Publishers must ensure that the content is not violating any of the manual action guidelines. If there’s anything on the content that violates the policies, then you must rework on the content and create a strategy according to it. However, you can plan with your editorial team accordingly.
