Google & AI Search Recovery Service
I help websites hit by Google core updates, manual actions and risky GEO/AI-search tactics recover their rankings, traffic and AI visibility. Forensic assessment, clean-up and reconsideration support — from one consultant with 15+ years of recovery work. It works, until it doesn’t. Then we fix it.
A site that scaled content with AI, then lost SEO and AI-search visibility in a single update. The decline is steeper than the climb — it usually is.
A full Google & GEO recovery service.
I offer an end-to-end recovery service for businesses whose websites have lost traffic and rankings after a Google core update, a manual action, or a risky GEO/AI-search strategy that backfired. That means a full assessment, the clean-up work itself, and — where a manual action is involved — the reconsideration request that gets the penalty lifted.
Google Search Console has a section called Manual Actions — it’s where penalty notifications appear. When one does, it can hit anything from a single page to your entire domain, depending on the scale and severity of the action.
Manual actions are painful, but they’re often easier to recover from than core-update losses — because Google tells you exactly what the issue is, and gives you a route to submit a reconsideration request once it’s genuinely fixed. Core-update and GEO-driven declines are quieter and harder to read, which is where forensic diagnosis earns its place.
Diagnosing what happened, when it happened, and which pages, tactics or links caused it — separating true causes from noise.
Removing, pruning, rewriting and rebuilding the content, links and signals dragging the site down.
Reconsideration submissions for manual actions, and monitoring recovery through Google’s subsequent updates.
A drop you leave in place keeps costing you — twice.
While a penalty or demotion is in place, it doesn’t just cut today’s rankings and traffic — it holds back everything you publish afterwards. New content lands into a suppressed domain, so the recovery you’re trying to build never quite catches. The sooner it’s addressed, the less compounding damage it does.
In 2026 there’s a second cost. Because AI search engines retrieve from the same indexes that power organic rankings, losing SEO visibility means losing AI visibility too. Your citations in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews fade at the same time your organic rankings do — and they don’t come back until the underlying site does.
That’s why recovery isn’t a choice between SEO and GEO. Restoring one restores both. Leaving it unaddressed damages both.
Every new page you publish inherits the domain’s demotion until the root cause is fixed.
AI answers cite the sites search already trusts. When Google demotes you, the AI citations fade with it.
The longer a manual action or demotion sits, the more traffic, revenue and momentum compound against you.
A comprehensive recovery engagement.
Whether the damage is a manual action, a core-update demotion, or a GEO strategy that turned toxic, the engagement covers assessment, resolution and reconsideration.
What the recovery assessment covers.
I start with your Search Console data and visibility history to establish what you’re dealing with — the exact manual actions in place, or the update and content patterns behind a quieter decline. Here’s the ground it covers.
A process, not a hack.
There’s no shortcut out of an algorithmic demotion or a manual action. There’s a proven sequence, applied consistently and measured honestly. Here’s how I run it.
Exactly when and where the decline happened — which updates, which subfolders, which content types, which links — using visibility data and pattern analysis.
Impacts are rarely one thing. I weigh content quality, E-E-A-T, technical foundations, link profile and risky tactics — and separate true causes from noise.
A concrete roadmap of what to remove, prune, consolidate, rewrite, disavow and rebuild — sequenced by impact. Content removal is a powerful, underused lever.
For manual actions, a reconsideration submission once the issue is genuinely fixed. Alongside it, the E-E-A-T rebuild that durable recovery depends on.
Core-update recovery is usually only visible when Google re-evaluates at the next update — and that only goes your way if the problems are genuinely resolved.
Recoveries and rebuilds I’ve led.
Every figure below comes from getting the foundations right — technical SEO, content quality and authority — not from shortcuts. The same discipline that recovers a demoted site is the one that builds a durable one.
A healthcare brand in a YMYL vertical rebuilt around topical authority, technical fixes and E-E-A-T — the compounding curve that comes from fixing the foundations rather than papering over them.
An online pharmacy after years of investment with a previous agency and nothing to show for it. An 84-slide audit diagnosed cannibalisation and indexation problems; the rebuild tripled organic sales on durable, trust-led rankings.
Head of SEO then consultant across 36+ months, building the organic infrastructure that made Future Fit the largest fitness education brand in the UK — and defending it through successive core updates.
Diagnosed a Next.js rendering issue that was suppressing indexation, rebuilt the commercial architecture, and captured London PCO hire demand at scale — a technical recovery turned into compounding growth.
“Luca’s SEO work is incredibly thorough, leaving no stone unturned in optimising our online presence. His creativity in devising new strategies and his complete transparency in every step have been truly refreshing.”
Why did the penalty or drop happen in the first place?
There’s rarely a single answer. For most sites, a manual action or a core-update demotion is the result of spammy shortcuts taken with the SEO or GEO — often by a previous agency, an in-house team under pressure, or a vendor selling “AI citations” at scale. For a minority, it’s an external negative-SEO attack.
Every few years the industry rediscovers the same shortcut: publish more, faster, at scale. AI made it cheaper than ever, and a whole GEO industry emerged to sell it. But Google has spent two decades learning to detect manufactured visibility — and the LLM platforms built on top of search inherit those demotions.
The most common reasons I see:
How to check for a manual action penalty.
Google usually emails the address linked to your Search Console account when a manual action is applied — but those emails are easy to miss. To check directly:
Go to Google Search Console and sign in to the account for your website.
Select the property you want to check from the drop-down at the top left.
Scroll down the left menu to Security & Manual Actions and open it.
Click Manual actions.
If anything appears, the notice explains the violation. “No issues detected” means you have no manual action — and a quieter core-update or GEO cause is more likely.
Recovery takes time. I’ll tell you how much, upfront.
Manual actions can clear relatively quickly once the issue is genuinely fixed and the reconsideration is accepted. Core-update and GEO-driven declines are slower — sites often can’t fully recover until Google re-evaluates at a subsequent update, which typically means 6–12 months or more.
I tell you this because the recovery space is full of the same people who caused the problem, promising quick fixes and guaranteed timelines. There is no shortcut — only a proven process, measured honestly.
Timelines depend on the depth of the damage and Google’s update cadence — not on effort alone.
Recovery work, by someone who’s done it for over a decade.
There are plenty of people selling recovery in 2026 — many of them the same people selling the tactics that cause the problem. Here’s what makes the difference.
I’ve worked through Penguin, Medic, the core-update era, the Helpful Content Update and the March 2024 update — diagnosing and reversing losses across regulated and competitive niches.
No account managers, no junior handoffs. The person diagnosing your drop is the person doing the clean-up and writing the reconsideration request.
Healthcare, pharmacy, legal, automotive and fitness education — the verticals where Google applies the heaviest scrutiny and where E-E-A-T recovery matters most.
Every engagement is grounded in the E-E-A-T method. The only durable way out of a demotion is to become a site Google and AI systems genuinely want to surface.
BrightonSEO speaker, Search Engine Land columnist, LinkedIn Top 25 SEO Consultant 2025. The frameworks I apply for clients are the ones I publish.
Because AI visibility rides on the same index as organic, I recover both at once — restoring your rankings and your citations in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews.
Frequently asked questions
Ready to find out what actually happened to your traffic?
Tell me what you’re seeing: when the drop started, what you’ve tried, and what your site has been publishing. I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.