Using google search console you can determine if a manual action has been applied to your own website: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en

Rather than determine the ranks, these actions remove / punish offending websites from the ranks, effectively making room for 'good' actors.

Manual actions often come after a a significant change in ranking algorithm or policy, and can be reverted / resolved in some cases. This usually requires removing or disavowing (in the case of unauthorized or unresponsive sites) the links pointing to a website.

wow that's amazing, I guess I sort of quit reading blogs like this when all the RSS readers died.

I wonder how much of modern search crappiness is because much of the good content that used to be in small blogs is now locked away behind facebook’s logins.

>Google issues a manual action against a site when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's webmaster quality guidelines. Most manual actions address attempts to manipulate our search index. Most issues reported here will result in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from search results without any visual indication to the user.

[1] https://searchengineland.com/googles-cutts-we-dont-ban-sites...