Hi jandara and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

We have a busy thread here each month so that webmasters around the world can share their observations. This helps to give context when we observe small or major changes - See what they're saying, it sounds very similar for many: [webmasterworld.com...]

Do you have a GSC account to check there for hints? Have you kept up with things like Core Web Vitals and User Experience? The site: operator has been less reliable than GSC for quite awhile. If you don't have a GSC account it might help you to open a Google Search Console account for your site.

@Jandara ... glad you joined us!

Site: has become iffy over the last few years. Sometimes works, sometimes does not... We do not know why.

Check your server logs. This will reveal what g is actually crawling.

Check your topic. G changes minute to minute what they will show and won't show ... and never say why such changes are made.

Check your competitors ... how are they faring?

You did not reveal the history of your site, such as when it went live, so we lack important info in that regard. G is pretty quick ... but most times it takes six months or a YEAR to see changes.

Please report back with any new information or results!

Peace first.

Then, it does not require a manual action, to be sent to oblivion. If your site was in a gray area , it's possible that the ranking algorithm decided on its own that you didn't deserve to be ranked.

That being said, check your GSC, to check the different graphs, this should explain your loss of ranking.

Check with the inspection tool, to see if your site is crawl-able by Googlebot.

Be sure that :

- your robots.txt is not excluding Googlebot.

- your firewall is not blocking Googlebot, (or visitors)

- you didn't mess up with canonical urls.

- your site hadn't been hacked

In addition to the technical reasons, there are many other reasons why you may not be ranking.

You don't say how long your site has been up, or how well established it was, Your mention of "manual action" suggests that in the past you may have used techniques which have pushed you close to or over the line of what Google considers manipulative or spammy.

If you made changes to the site, say, that were in response to an earlier unexpected drop in ranking, perhaps Google has been testing what your earlier techiques have been. Google does analyze your past history and can detect manipulative intent fairly well.

I suggest looking at this discussion from 10 years ago, about a Google spam detection patention. While Google doesn't necessarily implement everything it patents, I'm fairly certain that it uses variants of the patent discussed here. The discussion is complex, but this one brings up issues that I think may be worth your attention....

Google's Rank Modifying Patent for Spam Detection
Aug 18, 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4486158.htm [webmasterworld.com]

This, in addition to the technical issues mentioned. I should add that even when there are no spam issues involved, changes to a site's linking structure or its most prominent content often tend to cause Google to reevaluate a site that's not strongly established.

PS to the above... I've also seen a site get reconsidered and drop significantlly in rankings if it makes big attempts to increase monetization.