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Over the past week or two there has been some people suggesting that Google does not review manually every single reconsideration request.
A new Google Webmaster Help thread has one such complaint but the truth is, at least from what we are told, Google employees reviews 100% of all reconsideration requests.
I have been told that directly by Googlers and Matt Cutts did a video a couple years ago on the topic. That was before Google swapped the reconsideration requests in the manual action viewer where now all reconsideration requests have to be submitted via the manual action section and thus all are reviewed by humans.
They might have some templated responses they use but humans do click on, read and paste the response.
Here is Matt's video:
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Marie Haynes
03/12/2014 12:48 pm
While I do believe that humans look at every reconsideration request I really wish there was some way that they could provide feedback further than the canned responses that they give. If a site failed reconsideration because they had problems with their disavow (i.e. disavowed on the url level instead of domain), it wouldn't take much for them to say, "Look for problems with your disavow." I've reviewed reconsideration requests that have failed because their Google Docs were set to private and the webspam team couldn't see the work they'd done. They likely just got the standard failure message and wouldn't have any idea what was wrong. If the team could put in a couple of sentences to give the site owner further direction that would be so helpful.
Dave Fogel
03/12/2014 01:16 pm
I agree with you. The responses are canned and for the most part useless. The last one I did pointed out links that they denied me on, but those links were in the disavow file and the google doc. They clearly didn't look very hard.
Marie Haynes
03/12/2014 01:31 pm
That is definitely frustrating when that happens. I think that sometimes when that happens, they're telling you that even though *that* link is disavowed, there are similar ones like it that haven't been addressed. And of course, be sure they're disavowed on the domain level.
jimmy
03/12/2014 01:59 pm
Start the disavow process. Half-way through, submit the file. Continue working on it. They will reject your first attempt. Complete your disavow process and submit again.
Jeremy Meindl
03/12/2014 05:27 pm
Humans read the requests while robots send the "detailed responses"
Josh Zehtabchi
03/12/2014 05:55 pm
A couple sentences X (times) Y sites X(times) Z number of requests... I don't blame them for being so thin. I like it, actually.
Josh Zehtabchi
03/12/2014 05:56 pm
There are many patterns and relations Google shows by even a sample of 3 links. It's like where's Waldo. Mixed with insomnia. But all jokes aside, from the examples a trained eye should be able to pick up on the theme/tone of what got them in trouble or what Google may consider spammy.
Marie Haynes
03/12/2014 06:07 pm
*Usually*, but it's not always obvious. For example, sometimes Google doesn't give example links. Sometimes the example links are ones that have already been disavowed on the domain level. Does that mean that there are similar examples like that? Or does it mean that they need us to do more work actually removing? It would make much more sense for them to give us a sentence telling us what the problem is. Sometimes the example links are of links that are truly natural. (And trust me...they have done this for links that I know 100% are natural.) Does that mean that Google is treating this as an unnatural link? Or that there are similar links that are unnatural? Or that they are making complete guesses? If they could tell us that they feel that this is a paid link it would help. I'm probably asking too much though. :)
Josh Zehtabchi
03/12/2014 06:18 pm
Fair enough, but in reality. I think if Google decided to give more information it would be more of a slap on the wrist than a real life, game changing penalty. It would be as if you get pulled over speeding, then the cop says, hey, we have speed traps here Mon/Tues/Thurs from 8PM until 10PM, next time use a different road. Maybe I'm just playing devils advocate, but I just fear what people with no experience (not directed at you by any means) can do with valuable information. I do see your point though, but in every case I've dealt with the pattern or context of links provided added more value than any words typed. I think a drastic change to their Google Guidelines is what's really needed. They worked on this a few years ago with examples but seemed to have just left it on the back burner. Shrugs, good points regardless, Doc.
Neeraj Dudani
03/13/2014 11:58 am
I guess there can be millions of requests received by Google, do they have large number of employees for the same task?