Manual Actions For Discover & Google News

About a year ago, Google first introduced guidelines around manual actions for Google Discover and Google News. In the past week, I have seen numerous news publishers, both large and small, receive such manual actions. I believe this is the first time I have seen documented cases of news publishers receiving specific Google News and Google Discover manual actions.

These specific violations that were cited that I spotted this week include violations for:

• News and Discover policy violation: Misleading content
• News and Discover policy violation: Medical content
• News and Discover policy violation: Manipulated media
• and more…

Glenn Gabe shared some screenshots of these violations on Twitter for publishers who have reached out to him regarding these manual actions:

Heads-up. Don’t ignore Discover & Google News policy warnings in GSC. It might take 6 months or a year, but a manual action could follow. Had multiple publishers reach out this weekend about manual actions for Discover/Google News. E.g. misleading content, medical content, etc. pic.twitter.com/JutaP82HQL

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 30, 2022

Here is a set of complaints on Twitter from another publisher:

For example https://t.co/EnGqOqQgri is a listing page for Pikmin content. I don’t mind if that’s in Discover or not, the articles have the information. We have thousands of listing pages. I don’t want to get a warning for each one because the process can’t tell the difference.

— Ant (@AntNetworkN) January 21, 2022

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I’m wondering if it’s an error. The Submit Request for reconsideration only goes to this page, so a request can’t be submitted. pic.twitter.com/8VdlPAsn5Q

— Ant (@AntNetworkN) January 21, 2022

Make it stop please.

Today it’s flagging this content which contains the latest Arcane Season 2 release date information, and other information about the series.https://t.co/6cPnqImlNY pic.twitter.com/SnuZ3zmcZz

— Ant (@AntNetworkN) January 25, 2022

Keep in mind, these manual actions to not impact web search, they should only impact Google Discover and Google News.

You can see a list of the manual actions for Google News and Discover over here.

Forum discussion at Twitter.