Google Publishes 12 New Types of Manual Penalties for Violation of News & Discover Policies

Google has added a whole new set of manual action penalties for violating Google News and Google Discover guidelines.

This notes the first-ever time a site could get a manual action penalty for contravening Google News and Google Discover policies. Earlier, the search engine only restricted manual actions to contraventions of Google Search.

However, that doesn’t imply Google has not been imposing its guidelines around News and Discover. Of course, it has. But up until now, these impositions were automated, whereas now they will be manual.

The difference is that unlike an automated penalty, a human reviewer at Google issues a manual penalty after they ascertain that a particular website is not in compliance with the search engine’s guidelines.

Customarily, a manual penalty leads to the websites or pages being ranked lower in the search results or excluded entirely from the SERPs. Although, it is uncertain what the consequences will be when a website gets slapped with a manual penalty for the violation of Google News and Discover policies.

There is no clarity regarding whether the pages or websites will be demoted or entirely removed only from Google News and Discover or whether the manual penalty will extend to Google Search as well. Even the Google Help page does not mention anything regarding this.

In any case, it is in the best interest of every website owner to try and keep away from these penalties. Among all the other Google penalties, manual actions happen to be the most severe of all, and it takes substantial efforts to recover from them.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the 12 new manual penalties for violation of Google News and Google Discover guidelines.

Google News and Google Discover Manual Penalties

Some of the newly added manual actions are specific to News, while some are specific to Discover, and some are specific to News and Discover.

Google News Penalties

The manual penalty specific to News is for contravening Google’s transparency policy.

If a website shows up in Google News and doesn’t give exact dates and bylines, along with information about the author, publisher, publication, company, or network behind it, as well as contact details, it might be found in violation of the transparency policy.

Google Discover Penalties

The two manual penalties specific to Google Discover are –

• Adult-themed content: Google may find a website in violation of this policy if it contains content that includes nudity, sexually suggestive activities, sex acts, or sexually explicit materials. Google usually permits medical or scientific terms related to human or sex education.
• Misleading content: Google may find a website in violation of this policy if it misleads the audience into engaging with its content by promising a story or topic which isn’t reflected in it.

Google News and Discover Penalties

There are nine new manual penalties specific to News and Discover. These are:

• Dangerous content: Google may find a website violating its dangerous content policy if it contains content that could directly promote severe and immediate harm to humans or animals.
• Harassing content: Google may find a website in violation of its harassing content policy if it contains bullying, harassment, or threatening content.
• Manipulated media: Google may find a website in violation of its manipulated media policy if it includes image, audio, or video content that has been manipulated to defraud, mislead or deceive.
• Violence and gore content: Google may find a website in violation of its violence and gore content policy if it includes content that encourages or glorifies violence. Moreover, the search engine also doesn’t allow extremely graphic or violent materials for the sake of disgusting others.
• Medical content: Google may find a website violating its medical content policy if it contains content primarily aimed at offering medical advice, treatment, or diagnosis for commercial purposes.
• Vulgar language and profanity: Google may find a website in violation of its vulgar language and profanity policy if it contains content that includes unjustified obscenities or profanities.
• Hateful content: Google may find a website violating its hateful content policy if it contains content that stirs up hatred.
• Sexually explicit content: Google may find a website violating its sexually explicit content policy if it includes explicit sexual imagery or videos primarily meant to cause sexual arousal.
• Terrorist content: Google may find a website violating its terrorist content policy if it includes content that encourages terrorist or extremist acts, such as recruitment, stirring up violence, and celebrating terrorist attacks.

Recovering From a Manual Penalty

In case your website has been hit by a manual action penalty either due to the violation of the News and Discover policies discussed above or due to other infringements, there are a few things you can do. Of course, recovering from a manual penalty is possible, but it takes a lot of effort. When a manual penalty is issued, the search engine sends a message to the website owner via Google Search Console.

This message will carry detailed information on how you can recover from this penalty. Recovery will generally comprise deleting the offensive content found in violation of the Google policies and then tendering a reconsideration request. Spend some time writing a smart and detailed reconsideration request that works for you.

Wrapping It Up

Google is always taking the necessary steps to ensure a smooth and convenient user experience. And misleading, vulgar, hateful, obscene, manipulative, threatening, and harassing content hinder this experience. Such content could potentially disturb the audience and cause severe damage to some persons and organizations. With the addition of these 12 new manual penalties, we will indeed see a significant improvement in the kind of content put on the web. As a website owner, it is in your own best interests to ensure your site complies with Google’s policies. Failing to do so, you will end up earning one of the most severe penalties of Google- manual action penalty. While recovering from these penalties is possible, it isn’t easy.