Manual action or algorithm update? How to tell the difference

Establish whether there is a review to request

A human reviewer can issue a manual action for a policy violation, and the affected property’s Manual actions report identifies it. If an action is listed, record its scope and work on the corresponding fixes. If the report is clear, concentrate on explaining the loss through technical checks, demand and search performance.

Put the rollout alongside your own release history

Use Google’s Search Status Dashboard for the start and finish of a core update and mark those dates alongside migrations, releases and tracking changes. Google recommends waiting at least a full week after a core update finishes before comparing a complete post-update week with a comparable week before the rollout. Matching dates give you a line of enquiry rather than a diagnosis.

Find out what actually changed

Compare clicks, impressions and position for the same queries, pages, country and search type. For example, if the apparent site-wide loss comes almost entirely from two product categories, inspect those pages, their canonicals and indexing first. If rankings are stable while impressions fall across seasonal terms, compare the same period last year and look at demand.

Set the work according to the evidence

When a manual action covers a directory, fix the policy issue throughout the affected set and prepare the review evidence. When an investigation points to a core update, examine the pages and search intents where rankings changed, what users now find in the results and what information your pages leave unanswered. Track subsequent changes against that original group of queries.