An unnatural links manual action is a penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google after finding a pattern of manipulative links to or from a site. It appears in the Manual actions report in Search Console, with a description of the issue and whether it affects the whole site or part of it. Fixing it requires cleaning up the links and submitting a reconsideration request.
The variants
Search Console uses several labels for link-related manual actions. The exact wording has changed over time, but the three common forms are:
- Unnatural links to your site: Google found a pattern of artificial inbound links and took action that can affect rankings
- Unnatural links to your site, impacts links: Google is discounting the bad links but not acting against the site as a whole
- Unnatural links from your site: your site is selling or placing manipulative outbound links
How to fix inbound link actions
Collect your links from Search Console and other tools, identify those that break the policies, and try to have them removed or qualified with nofollow or sponsored. Keep records of your outreach. For links you cannot remove, use the disavow tool at the domain level where appropriate. Then submit a reconsideration request explaining what happened, what you did, and what you changed so it does not recur.
Google's guidance asks for a real cleanup effort, so disavowing everything without trying removal is generally not enough on its own.
How to fix outbound link actions
Find the links you were paid or compensated for, or that were injected without your knowledge, and remove them or add rel="sponsored" or nofollow. Check templates, footers, widgets and old sponsored posts. Then request reconsideration.
Example
Cleaning up after an old agency
An illustrative logistics SaaS, Freightloom, finds an "unnatural links to your site" action in Search Console. Its link audit traces most problem links to guest posts bought by an agency years earlier, all using the same keyword anchor. The team emails the publishers, gets some links removed or nofollowed, disavows the rest by domain, and submits a reconsideration request with a summary of the work and a spreadsheet of contacts.
Common mistakes
Submitting a thin reconsideration request
A request that does not show genuine cleanup effort is often rejected. Explain the cause and the steps taken.
Expecting rankings to snap back
Lifting the action removes the penalty, but links that were discounted no longer help, so rankings may not return to their earlier level.
Questions
Check the Manual actions report in Search Console. Google also sends a notification when one is applied.
No. Algorithmic changes do not appear in the Manual actions report and cannot be fixed by a reconsideration request.
