Unnatural Links: The Two Manual Actions Google Names, and the Cleanup Arithmetic Behind Getting One Lifted

Unnatural links are links that Google judges were created mainly to manipulate search rankings rather than to help a reader. When a human reviewer at Google confirms a pattern of them, your Search Console Manual Actions report shows one of two notices: Unnatural links to your site, which is about your backlinks, or Unnatural links from your site, which is about the links you publish. They sound alike and they are fixed in completely different places. Below are Google’s own definitions and recommended steps verbatim, a table of where each kind of link spam has to be fixed, and the cleanup arithmetic that shows why the disavow file does most of the volume while the outreach does most of the persuading.

How Google defines the problem

Quoted from Google’s spam policies for web search, last updated 28 August 2026, checked today.

Link spam is the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.

Google’s link spam policy

It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute.

On paid and advertising links

Note the two words that do the work in the first sentence: “to or from”. The policy is symmetrical, which is exactly why there are two manual actions rather than one. And note what the second sentence allows. A paid link is not the violation. A paid link that passes ranking credit is.

The two manual actions, side by side

Both definitions are quoted from Google’s Manual Actions report help page, checked today. The page currently lists sixteen manual action types, and these are the only two about links.

If you are not sure whether you have a manual action at all, or whether a drop was algorithmic, start with manual action or algorithmic demotion. A manual action is named in Search Console. If the report says no issues detected, nothing on this page is your problem, and a disavow file is very unlikely to be your fix.

Google’s recommended steps, verbatim

For unnatural links to your site, the Manual Actions help page gives six steps in this order:

1. “First, review Google’s link spam policy.”
2. “Download a list of links to your site from Search Console.”
3. “Check this list for any links that violate our link spam policy.”
4. “For any links that violate our spam policies, contact the owner of that site and ask that they either remove the links or prevent them from passing PageRank, such as by adding a rel=”nofollow” or a more specific attribute.”
5. “Use the Disavow links tool in Search Console to disavow any links that you could not get removed.”
6. “When you’ve removed or disavowed the artificial links, select Request Review on the Manual Actions report.”

For unnatural links from your site, three:

1. “Identify any links on your site that were paid for or that appear to violate our link spam policy.”
2. “Either remove these links, or change them so that they no longer pass PageRank.”
3. “When you’re sure that your site is no longer in violation of our spam policies, select Request Review on the Manual Actions report.”

The order in the first list is the single most ignored instruction in link cleanup. Disavowing is step five, and the wording is precise: disavow the links “that you could not get removed”. Google expects you to have tried removal first. A reconsideration request that consists of a disavow file and nothing else has skipped steps two to four of Google’s own list. The disavow file guide covers the file itself, and the reconsideration request that gets accepted covers how to write up what you did.

On timing, the same help page says: “Most reconsideration reviews can take several days or weeks, although in some cases, such as link-related reconsideration requests, it may take longer than usual.” Link cases are named as the slow ones.

Where each kind of link spam has to be fixed

Google’s link spam policy lists eleven examples. I sorted them by where the fix physically lives, because that decides how long the cleanup takes and which of the two manual actions it relates to. The labels are my short versions of Google’s examples, not quotes.

Count the right-hand column. Ten of the eleven examples need action somewhere you do not control. Only the terms-of-service example can be fixed almost entirely in your own admin panel. That is the structural reason “links to your site” cleanups take months and “links from your site” cleanups take an afternoon, and it is why publishers who sell placements, a common situation in iGaming SEO, are usually better off qualifying every sponsored link with rel=”sponsored” before anyone at Google looks.

The cleanup arithmetic

This is a worked model, not client data, and every input is an assumption I have labelled. It exists to show the shape of a “links to your site” cleanup, which is what people underestimate.

Assume an audit of the Search Console links export flags 300 referring domains as violating the policy. Assume you make up to three contact attempts per domain, at five minutes each to find a contact and send a personal request. Then vary the one number nobody can predict, the share of owners who actually remove the link.

Two conclusions hold across all three rows. First, the disavow file ends up covering between 70 and 90 percent of the flagged domains whatever the removal rate, so it is doing most of the volume. Second, the outreach costs roughly the same 75 hours at most regardless, because you cannot know which owners will answer until you have asked them all. Those hours are not wasted. They are the effort that step four of Google’s list asks for, and the record of who you contacted, when, and what happened is the substance of a credible review request.

The model’s limits: removal rates vary enormously by link type, and some owners only remove for a fee, which you should never pay because that is paying for a link change. Domains that respond on the first attempt need no follow-ups, so 900 attempts is a ceiling rather than an estimate. And the flagged count itself depends on judgement, which is where most cleanups go wrong. Disavowing every ugly link is not the same as disavowing every violating one, a distinction I go into in toxic backlinks and, for inherited networks, PBN backlinks.

What I check before touching anything

• Which notice is it? “To” and “from” need different teams. One is an outreach project, the other is an editorial and template change.
• What does the link data say? Search Console’s links export is the list Google tells you to start from. Third-party tools add coverage but they do not replace it.
• Is there a pattern? Google’s description of both notices uses the word “pattern”, so the useful question is which campaign, vendor or year produced the links, not which individual URL looks worst.
• For “from” notices, what else is unqualified? Fix every sponsored and affiliate link at once, not only the ones you assume prompted the notice, before you request review.

An unnatural links manual action is one of the few penalties Google spells out in writing, with a named cause and a published fix. That makes it one of the more recoverable situations in this field, provided you follow the order Google gives rather than jumping straight to the disavow. The full diagnostic process is in my Google penalty recovery guide.

Related reading

• Google Penalty Recovery: how I diagnose and reverse a traffic collapse
• Manual action penalty or algorithmic demotion: how to tell which one hit you
• The disavow file, explained
• Google penalty removal: the reconsideration request that gets accepted
• Toxic backlinks: how I tell a real problem from an ugly one
• What are backlinks? What Google says they do, and the link arithmetic
• Breadcrumb schema: Google’s four required properties, and where breadcrumb links send authority
• Doorway pages: Google’s four examples, and the city-page arithmetic