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I have excellent news for the SEO world today. It seems like Google has finally pushed through a change with the reconsideration request process that SEOs and webmasters have been asking for since the reconsideration request began.
Now, if you submit a reconsideration request, Google may email you a few days later with a notification that they have actually reviewed your site. The review email reads:
Subject: We've processed your reconsideration request for [mywebsite.com]We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: [mywebsite.com].
We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.
Googler, Sagar, confirmed this to be the case. Sagar said that this is a recent addition to the Google Webmaster reconsideration request process. He added:
If your site starts showing up in the index after you get the confirmation message, your request was approved. However, if you are still having issues there is a good chance you are still in violation of our guidelines.
So now, if you submit a reconsideration request, you can know a bit later if your site is still in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines or not. This is a most welcomed addition.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Andy Beard
06/10/2009 01:14 pm
Why can't they just state that you were still found to be in violation? I can't see why slowing down the feedback process is somehow built into this.
Barry Schwartz
06/10/2009 01:40 pm
Andy, never happy? ;-)
Andy Beard
06/10/2009 03:52 pm
I am just thinking about the average Joe, who is the person Google really created these procedures for, as problems can be not the fault of a website owner, e.g. blogs being hacked, snake oil SEO etc. Those messages seem to have been rewritten by 20 corporate lawyers. All it is really saying is "Someone opened your support ticket" and nothing more.
Barry Schwartz
06/10/2009 05:28 pm
Yea, you are right, just kidding.
Shawn
06/10/2009 05:32 pm
This is great news and it’s something we recently experienced with a client site… We have a client whose site was penalized (all rankings dropped to the mid-50's) due to another blog inserting a site-wide blogroll link back to this client’s site. We got the blogroll link removed, and we instructed the client to file a reconsideration request, which they did. Five days later, they received ‘the message’ in Webmaster Tools that you refer to above. However, the client’s site rankings have yet to recover to their previous levels. Do you have any knowledge about what they should do next? Does Google actually send follow-up messages about the status of rankings re-instatement? By the way, this seems to be a big hole in the algo. Are site-wide links really this damaging?
David Eaves
06/10/2009 05:50 pm
Will they give a reason though? A lot of the time people genuinely don't know why there site is violating the guidelines. No offence to them, but the people at the Google webmaster help forum have never really been able to help me. Where do you go once that fails?
No Name
06/10/2009 06:23 pm
I've seen this since last year on Google Webmaster Tools in the UK. You get a instant message back just to confirm it's being sent. It comes back in 5 mins so it's all automated.
Chris
06/10/2009 08:19 pm
Maybe one day they'll send a note saying "Congratulations! You're back in." I have a client who received a penalty for 4 specific search terms based on work a former SEO company did for her (excessive blogging), and i saw that note above back in November. However, since then I've not seen any update. I agree with Andy. "Hey we got it" doesn't cut the mustard.
gabs
06/11/2009 08:32 am
@Shawn being on a blogroll should hurt and should help your client.. A drop in ranking is normally due to a drop in links or link juice.. Back on topic - at least it somethings.. not much but still something..
Oge Nwaozuzu
06/23/2009 10:09 am
The same day you posted this message (June 10th 2009), I noticed that a no of my sites had been banned - The only thing i could think of that got me banned was that a few of my sites were linking to a Viagra website - but then i noticed that 2 of them werent linking to Viagra and still got removed. I did a reinclusion request on that same 10th June and got that same exact message you stated above on the 15th and 16th of June for the 9 sites that got removed. Today is the 23rd June and so far none of them have been reincluded - Google needs to know that to make things easier its better to state clearly what the problem is, instead of messing webmasters about!
No Name
06/25/2009 08:25 am
Will Yahoo learn a lesson from it or still charge us $47 per page inclusion.
Matt Dating
06/28/2009 06:40 am
I must have read this message at least 10 times to decide whether I have the green light or not. But this forum just confirms that it means nothing and is NO help to many innocent webmasters whos lively hoods depend on search engines. Some of the Google guidlines are so vague its like they must sit around a table and come up with ways to piss us all off, We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn't appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.
rai niaz ahmad
07/12/2009 05:07 pm
one ofmy site blocked and looking for solution, anybody can help me
Anthony
08/12/2009 09:44 am
This email is totally useless. I submitted a reinclusion request after fixing issues that might have been affecting my sites rankings and to date my rankings have not recovered from their position in the mid 50's. After showing the initiative to at least try ammending the issues that might be affecting your site the least Google could do is point out what else needs to be fixed to get the penalty removed. In the offline world this idiotic type of customer service wouldn't be tolerated.
Jordan
08/10/2010 05:38 pm
The process works. We did it for one of our sites, within a week or so, back on page one. Don't be afraid of Google, they are your friend.