Ambiguous Response to Google Reconsideration Request
-
Hello,
On 9/11/12, we submitted a reconsideration request to Google for http://macpokeronline.com, at the time we received penalties from both penguin and manual removal. We have since worked on cleaning up our link profile, and got this response from Google:
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://www.macpokeronline.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.
I honestly don't even know how to take this, we always showed up #1 while doing a site search, so it is kind of irrelevant to us in this case.
Is this the reply of them accepting our request?
Thanks
Zach
-
For those wondering, Matt Cutts answers the question in this video; It basically means that your site is is a grey zone. Not completely clean nor completely useless. Unfortunately for http://macpokeronline.com, it seems that the issues are not that easy to resolve.http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research/domains/organic?url=MacPokerOnline.com&cc=US
-
We received exactly the same response following a recent reconsideration request after several failed attempts where they reiterated that we still had bad links. We continued removing questionable links over the following six weeks while I waited to see if they would follow it up with something a little more enlighten but unfortunately nothing was forthcoming.
As such I submitted another reconsideration request asking if they could possibly elaborate slightly and after just two days received exactly the same response again. As such I’m still a little puzzled.
-
You are correct, that's why I'm doing a huge linkbuilding campaign focusing on .edu TLDs. The .edus should help us recover from what we were losing before, especially since they are high quality domains, with a high DA.
-
Don't forget because you removed those links, those links that could have been helping you were the same ones you were being penalized for.
Thus if you remove those, you will not have as many links.
-
Irving,
Thank you for your response. I understand what your saying. MacPokerOnline.com isn't an online betting site, it's simply a site where users can get reviews and discount codes for online casinos, but specializing with Poker on the mac OS.
Please be aware that when you search google (in an incognito window) for "mac poker" (broad match), that our site is #1 there, with Google Authorship. We never lost rankings on our main pages, it is just for longtail phrases.
Just thought I'd let you guys know this.
-
This is a good sign because you didn't get the email that says they found it is still in violation. But it doesn't mean your site will automatically bounce back by any means it means they are considering it. Given that it's a online betting site and that sites like that are illegal in the US you're fighting an uphill battle.
Keep tracking your rankings and see if they are coming back. Keep looking at backlinks and on page areas of improvement. Make a new reconsideration request every two weeks stating specific areas of improvement that you have made showing very specific examples.
-
I'm laughing at some of the responses.
My suggestion is just send off another reconsideration request. And under explanation, tell them you were unsure what they previous reconsideration reply mean't. I'm sure that should work out and couldn't hurt.
Its not like they would say, hey we are indexing your site again but for the smart--- reply we will deindex your site or vice versa.
-
Hmm, it's a tough one, but it seems like they are saying you have no further problems else, they would certainly state that the site was still in violation.
The standard type of message you see if they still detect problems is more like this:
"Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.site.com/,We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.site.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.**We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.**Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support."
Now, your message does not have that, but it is still very strangely worded so I would imagine you still have some kind of problems.
What I am seeing with a few clients I have picked up is a cluster of problems. So, they may have a manual penalty, then some penguin issues and some panda issues on top of that.
Additionally, whilst your manual penalty may have been lifted, you could still have a period where you will remain penalised in my experience but that penalty should, at some point, timeout.
But... depending on when you picked up this manual penalty, who knows what other penalties you have picked up in the meanwhile (panda / penguin etc).
Ultimately, it's impossible to give a generic answer here. You need to review the site attempt to identify any remaining algorithmic penalties which there are some fairly good guides available to do that now.
Here are some links that may help:
General content improvement
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content
**Anchor text ratios **
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/seo/anchor-text-ratios-and-link-building/
Penguin
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/penguin-strategies/ - complicated
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/penguin-diagnosis-and-recovery-strategy/ - a little simpler
Panda
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/beating-the-panda-diagnosing-and-rescuing-a-clients-traffic/
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/google-panda-problems-and-solutions/
I have had a quick dig in the link profile and it seems you have cleaned up a lot of what is reported in Open Site Explorer so maybe it is just a case of waiting things out a little longer and seeing if a Penguin refresh sorts things out a bit. It's hard to get a real guage of your link profile, anchor text, relevance of linking sites etc based on the current data returned by open site explorer but some general rules that are coming out of the research done by several sites (the microsites and anchor text articles above make for a good read)
- Have at least 50% of your links from topically relevant sites
- keep keyword anchors below 30%
- branded URL anchors should make up about 70% of your link profile
- Ensure that at least two of the top five anchors are branded (really, post penalty, aim for three +)
When you have got to those kind of conservative levels with your link profile then you can be a little more happy that you are going to be able to bounce back but again, it may take time.
It is a frustrating situation and any 'attempt' at sorting this out should be given 110% else you are really going to struggle. I am not really sure what another agency could do to help you at this point other than more of what you are doing and maybe a solid on site review but you are probably in the position where you just have to wait and see (however frustrating that may be).
Let me know how you get on!
Marcus
-
What if we were to increase the amount of "good/great" links that we having coming to the site? Wouldn't that assist in creating a more "natural" link profile?
-
You should focus on removing those nasty backlinks from the blog networks... or at least provide a list of them in your reconsideration request with appropriate explanation. Usually it would take around 1-2 years for these backlinks to evaporate by themselves, why? because there is no reason whatsoever to renew those de-indexed domains & also cover the hosting costs.
-
Okay. I'll see what I can do with that. We can't to PPC since were promoting gambling unfortunately. Maybe well wait it out a few weeks to see what happens. Our site isn't deindexed and we have seen an increase in traffic the past few weeks of 5-15% week over week. I think this is penguin penalties getting lifted as google detects more links we've removed.
-
Find someone who can make Google look bad in public for deindexing your site. That always seems to work.
All jokes aside, I'd just wait it out. See what Google says and go from there. Perhaps invest in Adwords for a while and then beg your account manager to look at your reconsideration request again.
-
I'm actually working in house for the owner of this website, a larger marketing firm screwed him over from a Penguin and link perspective. I live in Philadelphia and know some employees from Seer, do you think I should ask them if this would be something Seer could take on?
-
I don't know what you should do.
If this was my site I would either find a pro who knows how to redeem sin.... start working on sites in a different niche.... or.... go to Vegas and get a job as a dealer.
-
So what should I do now?
-
"We've now reviewed your site."
They are being weasels. They are saying "wait and see if we have forgiven you".
I think you are screwed.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Https problem on google result.
Hello everyone. My problem is SSL certificate... Send all links to google, after google shows https link no problem. But a few minutes ago my home page link not have an SSL..
Technical SEO | | dalapayal
Please check this page : https://www.bodrumtransfermarket.com Where do I make a mistake? Thanks for all...0 -
Google Not Indexing Submitted Images
Hi Guys! My question isn't too dissimilar to one asked a couple of years ago, regarding Google and image indexing, but having put my web address into a Google image search, I get a return of 15 images, so something isn't right. 5 months ago I submitted our 'new' site to Google webmaster. We have just moved it onto a Shopify platform. They (Shopify) are good at providing places to add titles and Alt tags and likewise we fill them in (so that box ticked!) However I have noticed over the last couple of months that despite 161 images being submitted, only 51 have been indexed. Furthermore and as I said earlier, when you put our site, site:http://www.hartnackandco.com into Google images, it only returns a total of 15 images. Any suggestions and help would be wonderful! Cheers Nick
Technical SEO | | nick_HandCo0 -
Pages to be indexed in Google
Hi, We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages. Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone. My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate. If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Google ranking downgraded
On Sept 29th our website 'keyword' rankings who totally destroy. We were always #1 to #2 for these keywords 1. listing presentation
Technical SEO | | RandyRoussie
2. real estate presentation Our website is: http://www.agentpresentations.com We asked Google through Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site and they replied back saying nothing was wrong. We run Google Adwords and we contacted them and they looked at the keywords and sent screenshots to us showing the ranking we still there. But they are not... as proven in Webmaster tools. So Adwords told us to ask Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site again. Nothing yet... What do you suggest?0 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Google Search memory
Hi we have had the following statement from a member of our Japan office with regards google displaying search results, would anyone be able to give us a definitive answer on this. Google remembers previous non-mobile related searches For example, we already know that we come up on the first page if you select “kaigai keitai” (mobile phone for use abroad) and “UK” where as we don’t for searches where you replace the UK with the US or other countries. This means that if a customer, for example, does a search just on the UK e.g. using words like UK travel, London, millennium dome, etc. and then does a separate search just using the words “kaigai keitai” that google could show us as a link on the first page. However, if an individual did a search on Paris, France, Eiffel Tower, and then did a search for “kaigai keitai”, our link might not appear on the page. I don’t know if we have tested this already, but Google seems to have a very long “memory” and I could see this kind of aspect of Google resulting in us missing significant business from people going to the US, France, Italy, etc. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0 -
Google Custom Site Search
I am an admin on a google custom site search account. I am also the owner of a verified webmaster tools account for the same site. The Custom Search control panel will not let me add URL's or a Site map for on demand indexing, but says "you must submit a sitemap of your own verified sites". Has anyone else has this issue? Does the Owner of the custom search account have to be the owner of the webmaster account, or can the logged in admin be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEMPassion0 -
In Google Merchant is there any difference between google_product_type and product_type
It used to by that we needed to just submit a product type, and now Google wants a google product type that fits within the Google Taxonomy. We always submitted the old product_type in accordance with the Google Taxonomy anyway so now we have 2 columns one for google_product_type and one for just product_type and they are the exact same thing. This seems wrong but does anyone know if there should be a difference?
Technical SEO | | KentH0