Google Penalties and Yandex Filters: How Sites Get Sanctioned
Basics3 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
A site loses rankings either through a manual action that the search engine reports in its webmaster panel, or through an algorithm that silently demotes spam, paid links and over-optimized text. Check Search Console and Yandex Webmaster first, then match the drop date to your own changes.
The short answer: two kinds of sanctions
Search engines sanction sites in two ways:
- Manual actions — a human reviewer checked the site and demoted it or removed pages. You learn about it from a notice in the webmaster panel.
- Algorithmic demotions — an automated system decided the site breaks the rules or is simply less useful than competitors. There is usually no notice, just a traffic drop.
The difference matters: a manual action is lifted through a reconsideration request, while an algorithmic demotion only goes away once the algorithm re-evaluates the fixed site.
Google: manual actions and algorithms
Manual actions appear in Google Search Console under "Security & Manual Actions". Typical reasons:
- unnatural inbound or outbound links (paid, exchanged);
- hidden text and keyword stuffing;
- cloaking — showing different content to bots and users;
- auto-generated or scraped content with no added value;
- a hacked site or user-generated spam.
Algorithmic demotions come from ranking updates: core updates and spam updates. They do not "punish" a specific violation — they recalculate which pages are more useful. That is why a site can drop without breaking any rule.
The main Yandex filters
| Filter | Triggered by | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Minusinsk | Buying SEO links to manipulate rankings | The site is demoted |
| AGS | Low-quality content, sites built to sell links | Pages drop out of the index, outgoing links stop counting |
| Baden-Baden | Over-optimized text stuffed with keywords | Individual pages or the whole host are demoted |
Yandex also demotes sites for manipulating behavioral signals, for deceiving users (clickunders, malicious code) and for excessive ads. Violations are reported in Yandex Webmaster under "Diagnostics" → "Security and violations".
How to tell what actually happened
- Check notices. Search Console (manual actions, security issues) and Yandex Webmaster (security and violations). If both are empty, it is most likely an algorithm or a technical issue.
- Rule out technical causes. An accidental
noindex, a robots.txt block, URL changes without redirects or server downtime often look like a "filter" but are not. - Find the drop date. Match it against your site changes, link buying and the search engines' public update announcements.
- Check the scope. Did the whole site drop or only certain pages? Baden-Baden, for example, can target only over-optimized pages.
- Compare search engines. A drop only in Yandex points to its filters; a drop only in Google points to its algorithms or a manual action.
How to recover
- Links: remove paid links where possible. For Google, the remaining spammy links can be disavowed with the Disavow tool.
- Text: rewrite pages for people — remove repeated keywords, hidden blocks and long "SEO text" at the bottom of pages.
- Content: delete or merge thin and copied pages.
- Security: clean up hacks and malicious code, update the CMS and passwords.
- Request a review: after fixing, submit a reconsideration request in Search Console or report the fix in Yandex Webmaster.
Common mistakes
- Treating every traffic drop as a filter without checking the technical side.
- Removing all inbound links, including natural ones.
- Requesting a review after only partially fixing the issue.
- Repeating the same practices on a new domain — history repeats too.