Very interesting numbers. To me, that suggests that the identification of manual action candidates may be heavily automated (unless Google have an absolutely huge team doing this). Implies some interesting potential differences between algorithmic and manual action, too.

our algorithms addressed the vast majority of webspam

500 manual penalties an hour, what could the algo-penalty an hour number look like...

Just to clarify Google's wording:

We sent more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters to notify them of manual actions we took on their site and to help them identify the issues

(Emphasis mine)

There's also a comment from a Googler directly addressing the large numbers as follows:

...you'd be surprised at what is in fact humanly possible!
Manual actions do go through human review -- when identifying the reason for the action, when applying it, and at the time of reviewing reconsideration requests. Much of our effort is spent on giving the team the tools so that these checks can be done at scale without sacrificing accuracy

I can imagine a categorised list of potential manual action targets so that they can be reviewed/applied very quickly. I assume the majority of cases are straightforward.

more than 4.3 million messages

Does one get more than 1 message notifying of an action?

Does one get more than 1 message notifying of an action?

Well, if you respond to a manual action notice you get a reply (to say yes or no to removing it). For some sites that could be a series of noes followed by a yes. It's not clear whether this would be included in that 4.3 million number.

I'd hate to think how many the algo trips up without notifications, but the manual action is an interesting one because it suggests some kind of manual review, such as with the Quality Rating Guidelines [webmasterworld.com...] meaning there will be some form of communication to the webmasters. That's got to be a good thing.

That's potentially a pretty significant difference, maybe the title of this topic should be changed, not trying to mislead.

maybe the title of this topic should be changed, not trying to mislead.

Yes it probably should be changed from "penalties" to "manual actions".

Yes it probably should be changed from "penalties" to "manual actions".

And messages, rather than necessarily actions. I updated it. Given that the numbers are so high, I think the thrust of the discussion is still valid enough!

I find this interesting"

More than 400,000 spam reports were submitted by users around the world. After prioritizing the reports, we acted on 65% of them, and considered 80% of those acted upon to be spam.

I wish we had a time frame for how long it took for them to act on the 65%.

Still, it should be kind of encouraging to those who file reports. Acting on 2 out of 3 isn't a bad ratio.

But that's only 400,000 out of 4.3 million (unless I'm mixing apples and oranges). It'd be interesting to see the action trail of the other 3.9m action messages.

.

And they still can't find keyword stuffed spam sites!

And they still can't find keyword stuffed spam sites!

Ahem to that.
Or figure out how not to rank BigBox stores above of all REAL SMBs, niche online retailers, where BigBox has only one mention of "Blue Widgets" in H1(spamming 100% proven fact) with no actual "Blue Widgets" for the past 10 years now.

A report of how many manual actions have been taken does not answer the burning question of WHAT KIND of manual actions. Yes, some will make suggestions but I doubt any will be definitive ANSWERS. G has to be careful to not reveal all as that would provide a blueprint on how to game the system.

Some spammers create more than 500 websites per hour, there's a lot of spam still out there!