In the latest Rand Moz weekly video, Rand said that reconsideration requests via the Google Search Console did work and help reverse Penguin penalties. Jennifer Slegg pointed out to Rand that is and was not the case but Rand does not believe it.
Here is that conversation with Rand and Jenn:
@jenstar I never believed them on that. Too many examples of Penguin issues lifted post reconsideration+update. Granted, hard to know @Moz
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) October 7, 2016
I should point out that many many SEOs confuse link manual actions with Penguin and many cases there is an overlap of sites with Penguin issues that also have manual actions. But Google said before, Penguin penalties don't get manual actions notices. Google also said time and time again that algorithms can never be reversed by submitting a reconsideration request.
I asked Gary Illyes from Google this morning and he said, never ever did a reconsideration request reverse a Penguin or algorithmic penalty:
@rustybrick @JohnMu @schachin @randfish @jenstar @Moz absolutely not. Never did and it doesn't now
— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 7, 2016
But some still may not believe him, I do.
Back in 2013, Google moved the reconsideration request system to the manual action viewer because they couldn't reverse algorithmic penalties with this tool. So they got too many requests for things they could not do anything directly about.
Google does know how to look up algorithmic issues but has chosen not to provide what I call an automated action viewer.
That being said - again, Google said the reconsideration request doesn't help remove Penguin, Panda or other algorithmic issues for your site.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
