Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. What can I do if my reconsideration request is rejected?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    What can I do if my reconsideration request is rejected?

    Technical SEO
    3
    3
    1402
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • SteveBrumpton
      SteveBrumpton last edited by

      Last week I received an unnatural link warning from Google.  Sad times.

      I followed the guidelines and reviewed all my inbound links for the last 3 months.  All 5000 of them!  Along with several genuine ones from trusted sites like BBC, Guardian and Telegraph there was a load of spam.  About 2800 of them were junk.  As we don't employ any SEO agency and don't buy links (we don't even buy adwords!) I know that all of this spam is generated by spam bots and site scrapers copying our content.

      As the bad links have not been created by us and there are 2800 of them I cannot hope to get them removed.  There are no 'contact us' pages on these Russian spam directories and Indian scraper sites.  And as for the 'adult book marking website' who have linked to us over 1000 times, well I couldn't even contact that site in company time if I wanted to!  As a result i did my manual review all day, made a list of 2800 bad links and disavowed them.

      I followed this up with a reconsideration request to tell Google what I'd done but a week later this has been rejected "We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines."  As these links are beyond my control and I've tried to disavow them is there anything more to be done?

      Cheers

      Steve

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MarieHaynes
        MarieHaynes last edited by

        Tom has given you good advice.  I'll put in my 2 cents' worth as well.

        There are 3 main reasons for a site to fail at reconsideration:

        1. Not enough links were assessed by the site owner to be unnatural.

        2. Not enough effort was put into removing links and documenting that to Google.

        3. Improper use of the disavow tool.

        In most cases #1 is the main cause.  Almost every time I do a reconsideration request my client is surprised at what kind of links are considered unnatural.  From what I have seen, Google is usually pretty good at figuring out whether you have been manually trying to manipulate the SERPS or whether links are just spam bot type of links.

        Here are a few things to consider:

        Are you being COMPLETELY honest with yourself about the spammy links you are seeing?  How did Russian and porn sites end up linking to you?  Most sites don't just get those by accident.  Sometimes this can happen when sites use linkbuilding companies that use automated methods to build links.  Even still, do all you can to address those links, and then for the ones that you can't get removed, document your efforts, show Google and then disavow them.

        Even if these are foreign language sites, many of them will have whois emails that you can contact.

        Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that your good links are truly natural?  Just because they are from news sources is not a good enough reason.  Have you read all the interflora stuff recently?  They had a pile of links from advertorials (amongst other things) that now need to be cleaned up.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TomRayner
          TomRayner last edited by

          Hi Steve

          If Google is saying there are still a few more links, then it might be an idea to manually review a few others that you haven't disavowed. I find the LinkDetox tool very useful for this.  It's free with a tweet and will tell you if a link from a site is toxic (the site is deindexed) or if it's suspicious (and why it's suspicious).  You still need to use your own judgement on these, but it might help you to find the extra links you're talking about.

          However, there is a chance you have gone and disavowed every bad link, but still got the rejection.  In this case, I'd keep trying but make your reconsideration request more detailed.  Create an excel sheet and list the bad URLs and/or domains and give a reason explaining why you think they're bad links.  Then provide information on how you found their contact details.  If there are no contact us pages, check the whois registrar's email.  After that, say when you contacted them (give a sample of your letter to them too), and if they replied, along with a follow up date if you got silence.  If there are no details in the whois, explicitly mention that there are no contact details and so you have proceeded straight to disavowing.

          Then list the URLs you've disavowed (upload the .txt file with your reconsideration email).  You've now told Google that you've found bad links, why you think their bad (also include how you discovered them), that you've contacted the webmaster on numerous occasions and, if no removal was made, you've disavowed as a last resort.  This is a very thorough process and uses the disavow tool in the way that Google wants us to - as a last resort to an unresponsive or anonymous webmaster.

          Please forgive me if you've already done all this and it seems like repetition.  I only mention it because I've found it's best to be as thorough as possible with Google in these situations. Remember, a reconsideration request is manual and if they see that you've gone through all this effort to be reinstated, you've got a better chance of being approved.

          Keep trying, mate.  It can be disheartening, but if you think it's worth the time and effort, then keep going for it.  I would bear in mind the alternatives, however, such as starting fresh on a new domain.  If you find yourself going round the bend with endless reconsiderations, sometimes your time, effort and expertise can be better put elsewhere.

          All the best!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • DGAU

            Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?

            Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes -  would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
            ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.

            Technical SEO | | DGAU
            0
          • UnbounceVan

            How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?

            I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding   Disallow: /clkn/   in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?

            Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan
            0
          • MarloSchneider

            Can I mark up breadcrumbs without showing them? (responsive design)

            I am working on a site that has responsive design. We use faceted search for the desktop version but implemented a style of breadcrumbs for the mobile version as sidebars take up too much screen real estate. On the desktop design we are putting a display:none in front of the breadcrumbs. If we mark up those breadcrumbs and they are behind a display none, can we still get the rich snippets? Will Google see this is cloaking? In follow up, is there a way to markup breadcrumbs in the or somewhere else that is constant?

            Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider
            0
          • TruvoDirectories

            Can too many pages hurt crawling and ranking?

            Hi, I work for local yellow pages in Belgium, over the last months we introduced a succesfull technique to boost SEO traffic: we have created over 150k of new pages, all targeting specific keywords and all containing unique content, a site architecture to enable google to find these pages through crawling, xml sitemaps, .... All signs (traffic, indexation of xml sitemaps, rankings, ...) are positive. So far so good. We are able to quickly build more unique pages, and I wonder how google will react to this type of "large scale operation": can it hurt crawling and ranking if google notices big volumes of content (unique content)? Please advice

            Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
            0
          • healthgrades

            How can I find my Webmaster Tools HTML file?

            So, totally amateur hour here, but I can't for the life of me find our HTML verification file for webmaster tools. I see nowhere to look at it in Google Webmaster Tools console, I tried a site:, I googled it, all the info out there is about how to verify a site. Ours is verified, but I need the verification file code to sync up with the Google API and no one seems to have it. Any thoughts?

            Technical SEO | | healthgrades
            0
          • Zachary_Russell

            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

            Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell
            0
          • RobertFisher

            On a dedicated server with multiple IP addresses, how can one address group be slow/time out and all other IP addresses OK?

            We utilize a dedicated server to host roughly 60 sites on. The server is with a company that utilizes a lady who drives race cars.... About 4 months ago we realized we had a group of sites down thanks to monitoring alerts and checked it out. All were on the same IP address and the sites on the other IP address were still up and functioning well. When we contacted the support at first we were stonewalled, but eventually they said there was a problem and it was resolved within about 2 hours. Up until recently we had no problems. As a part of our ongoing SEO we check page load speed for our clients. A few days ago a client who has their site hosted by the same company was running very slow (about 8 seconds to load without cache). We ran every check we could and could not find a reason on our end. The client called the host and were told they needed to be on some other type of server (with the host) at a fee increase of roughly $10 per month. Yesterday, we noticed one group of sites on our server was down and, again, it was one IP address with about 8 sites on it. On chat with support, they kept saying it was our ISP. (We speed tested on multiple computers and were 22MB down and 9MB up +/-2MB). We ran a trace on the IP address and it went through without a problem on three occassions over about ten minutes. After about 30 minutes the sites were back up. Here's the twist: we had a couple of people in the building who were on other ISP's try and the sites came up and loaded on their machines. Does anyone have any idea as to what the issue is?

            Technical SEO | | RobertFisher
            0
          • KevinBloom

            Can local SEO harm national rankings?

            Today I met with a firm called Localeze that provides local directory submissions.  I understand the importance of this service if your site is competing locally, however I'm not sure the effects of local SEO for a national brand. Our firm gets most of our traffic from across the country, not just one location, and our business is scattered (which is a good thing).  We rank for service related keywords that are not tied to a location. We do not show up for local results so our business in our immediate location is weak.  We would like to increase our local presence in search engines but I want to make sure that this will not take away from our national presence. Will optimizing a site for local search negatively affect general rankings? Thanks

            Technical SEO | | KevinBloom
            1

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.