Question about New Client with Manual Actions / Partial Matches in GWT
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We just signed on a new client and are gaining access to their Analytics, GWT, etc... In GWT, we quickly went to "Manual Actions" as the client stated they've been slipping in rankings the past couple months from 1 to 4 to 8 and have been staying at around 7/8 for 15 of their main keywords.
Without getting into the specifics of their keyword rankings, I'm curious to know when they may have received the Partial Matches Manual Action from Google. I checked Messages and saw nothing about the Manual Actions update. Can anyone lend some advice as we are most likely going to have to put together a Disavow text file and begin sending requests to take down links.
Thank you in advance. Hope this was clear enough, but let me know if you need more info.
- Patrick
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Just wanted to mention that it's possible that the client themselves still has the original message in their Webmaster Tools. I have worked on some sites where even though I was given full access to WMT I could not see their messages. But, the original site owners could still see them.
Regardless, the date doesn't really matter, does it? You've got work to do!
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Thanks, Chris. You are correct in that now we at least know something is going on. Better to have this Manual Action notice than the Algo notice with crashing rankings. We'll get in to clean things up and submit for reconsideration.
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Doesn't really help but have seen the same thing, with the same notice but no way of knowing when the penalty was applied.
Other than drops in traffic, it seems there is no way to know whether the site is only affected by the manual penalty, or by both manual and algorithmic. (at least the manual action opens the door to a reconsideration request and therefore some feedback)
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Manual actions aren't update based, they happen on an ongoing basis when someone at Google looks at the site and decides it's in violation of their guidelines.
Good luck !
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