Google adds 12 new types of penalties

Google has introduced 12 new types of manual penalties that violate Google News and Google Discover policies.

This is the first time that a website could potentially be fined for violating News and Discover policies. Previously, manual actions were restricted to Google Search violations.

This is not to say that Google has not implemented its News and Discover policies. It is – but up to this point, enforcement is automatic.

Unlike an automatic penalty, a manual penalty is issued at Google. The fine is applied after the reviewer has determined that the site does not comply with Google’s guidelines.

Traditionally, a fine has resulted in pages or sites being ranked lower in Google Search. It is unclear what the consequences will be if a fine is imposed for violating Google News and Google Discover policies.

Google’s help page does not indicate whether the pages will be downgraded / deleted only from Discover and News, or if the fine will also extend to Google Search.

However, it is in the best interest of every site owner to avoid these fines. Manual action is the most severe of all Google fines and makes serious efforts to recover from.

With that said, let’s take a look at the 12 new penalties for manual action specific to Google News and Discover.

Google News and Google Discover Tutorials

Some of Google’s new manual fines are News-specific, others are Discover-specific, and others are News-specific. and Discover.

Google News Penalties

The one penalty that applies specifically to Google News is for violating transparency policies.

A website may be found in violation of this policy if it appears in Google News and does not contain clear dates and alignments, as well as information about the author, the publication, the publisher, company or network behind it and contact information.

Google Discover penalties

There are two penalties specific to Google Discover. These include:

• Adult content: Google has detected content that contains nudity, sex acts, sexually suggestive activities, or sexually explicit material.
• Misleading content: Google has detected content that appears to be misleading users by promising a topic or story that is not reflected in the content.

Google News and Google Discover penalties

There are nine manual penalties for policy violations shared between Google News and Google Discover. These include:

• Dangerous content: Google has detected content that could cause serious or immediate harm to people or animals.
• Harassing content: Google has detected content that contains harassment, bullying or threatening content.
• Hateful Content: Google has detected hate speech.
• Manipulated media: Google has detected audio, video or image content that has been manipulated to deceive, deceive or mislead.
• Medical content: Google has tracked down content that is intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment for commercial purposes.
• Sexually explicit content: Google has found content that contains explicit sexual images or videos that are primarily intended to arouse sexual arousal.
• Terrorist content: Google has detected content that promotes acts of terrorism or extremism, including recruitment, incitement to violence or terrorist attacks.
• Violence and blood content: Google has detected content that incites or glorifies violence. Google does not allow extremely graphic or violent material to disgust others.
• Vulgar language and blasphemy: Google has detected content containing free obscenities or blasphemy.

Recovery of a penalty

Restoring a manual action is possible, but it requires work. When Google issues fines, it sends a message to the site owner via the Search Console.

The Search Console message contains detailed information on how to recover from the fine. Recovery will usually consist of removing the offending content and filing a reconsideration request.

For more information, consult these best practices for writing reconsideration requests that work.

Source: Search Console Help