User behavior simulator
Your site was promoted using services or software that simulates user actions.
The user behavior simulator is a search promotion method used to influence a site's position in search results. It involves using special software or web services that imitate users' visits to the site from search engines.
Such visits don't bring any benefit to the site, do not make it better and more interesting for visitors and are considered search spam. Sites that use this deceptive promotion method may be significantly lowered in the search for a long time.
If you are sure that you didn't do it, it is possible that this was done by a company that provides search promotion services for your site. We recommend you to check actions of all your contractors and employees responsible for search engine optimization in recent months.
Yandex detected that I have this violation. How do I fix it?
It is enough to stop using user actions simulation. Our algorithms will detect this, and the ranking restrictions will be lifted automatically. You don't need to contact the support service for this or conduct any other work.
To inform our robots about the actions you completed, use the I fixed it button on the Security and violations page in Yandex.Webmaster. If the restrictions are lifted, the violation mark will disappear.
You can click the I fixed it button again for the same site after a month. Further, this period is increased up to three months to avoid the button misuse. Therefore, we recommend using the button only when you are sure that there are no more violations on the site.
If multiple users have website management rights in Yandex.Webmaster, agree on who will send the website for re-checking and when. After clicking the button, none of the users will be able to click it again within a month.
I stopped using this inappropriate promotion method. When the restrictions will be lifted from the site?
We can't predict when exactly restrictions are lifted. This process is completely automated and depends on the level of cheating activity. This may happen approximately 8-12 months after the the algorithms detect attempts to use inappropriate search promotion methods last.
But anyone can register my site in such services and “promote it by cheating”.
When developing these algorithms, we took into account that competitors may influence the site position and minimized this possibility.
You are mistaken. I didn't do anything like this!
This method is very accurate, and we are sure that in most cases it works correctly. We receive quite a lot of emails from webmasters whose sites received lower rankings because they use user activity simulator. After analysing such letters, we identified only a few debatable cases that required additional verification, which is less than 1% of the total number of requests.
Sometimes deceptive promotion methods are used by contracted SEO specialists, so that neither business owners nor webmasters have understanding of the provided services. We ask business owners, webmasters, and SEO specialists to pay more attention to the choice of promotion methods and SEO companies to avoid possible sanctions from the search engine.
The violation mark was removed but the site is still missing from the search results. What should I do?
The removal of the mark means that our algorithms decided to lift restrictions from the site. In some cases, it may take some time for these changes to appear in the search. This usually happens after one or two search database updates, which takes about two weeks on average.
I clicked the “I fixed it” button a month ago, the mark didn't disappear, and the button became active again. Should I click it again?
We consider the use of user behavior simulation a serious violation, so the restrictions term is 8–12 months. So, if you are sure that these methods aren't currently used to promote the website, you don't need to click the button again: our robot already took your signal into account. Now you just need to wait for the sanctions to be lifted.
I don't “promote my site by cheating” for more than eight months, but the restrictions still apply. What should I do?
Check if SEO optimizers or other specialists who work on your site still use user activity simulation. Make sure that at least eight months passed since the restrictions were applied or after the last attempt to use inappropriate search promotion methods. Maybe you should wait a little longer.
