Proper Way To Submit A Reconsideration Request To Google
-
Hello,
In previous posts, I was speaking about how we were penalized by Google for unnatural links. Basically 50,000 our of our 58,000 links were coming from 4-5 sites with the same exact anchor text and img alt tags. This obviously was causing our issues. Needless to say, I wen through the complete link profile to determine that all of the links besides this were of natrural origins.
My question here is what is the accepted protocol of submitting a reinclusion request; For example, how long should it be? Should I disclose that I was in fact using paid links, and now that I removed (or at least nofollowed) them? I want to make sure that the request as good as it should so I can get our rankings up in a timely manner.
Also, how long until the request is typically aknowledged?
Thanks
-
Hi Daniel,
I hope that by now your penalty situation has been resolved.
Was just a little concerned when I read this thread that there might be a little confusion over the need to remove those paid links from your site.
I just wanted to clear this up for any new people reading Q&A who might take away the wrong idea from the thread.
If the paid links are now nofollowed, you don't need to remove them (unless they are serving no other worthwhile purpose).
Matt Cutts talked about this in the webmaster help video Why do paid links violate Google's guidelines while other ads don't?
As Matt explains in the video, there is nothing wrong with having paid advertising on your site, as long as there is disclosure (usually in the form of a nofollow tag).
For those who might be reading this thread because they too are wondering what to include in a reconsideration request, we have created a Checklist on our site that might help. http://www.rmoov.com/google-reconsideration-request-checklist.php
Hope the penalty is now far behind you,
Sha
-
I would definitely mention the fact that you are under contract. I can't see any harm in it and it will probably look like a measure of good faith and honesty to Google that you are telling them everything.
-
Thank you everyone for your responses, they are all very helpful. Just to inform you guys, all of my problems were stemming from these paid links. The rest of my link profile is pretty healthy. The reason I cannot get the links removed altogether for now is because the ad network that I used is holding me to a contract, until the end of September, then i'm obviously canning them. Do you think I should state that in the request as well, about the links are there (but nofollowed) because I have a contract I committed to, but they will be completely removed at the end of September? Or should I just say I had them nofollowed. I am lucky in the way that all my paid links came from one network, and they cleaned up all of them in a few days (I verified on several hundred pages. Basically 15000 links were spread over 4 sites with macpokeronline.com as the anchor and 35000 links on macobserver.com with image link alt text as macpokeronline, which hit us with penguin as well as the manual paid link penalty.
Thanks again, and i'll let you guys know how this pans out
-
Good responses. Here is what I would do if I were in your shoes.
I would start off with a humble sentence: "Hi Google team. Thank you for receiving my reconsideration request. I realize that some of my links were not in line with the Google Quality Guidelines. In this document I have outlined what I have done to rectify that."
Then, I would list my links. So I'd say, for example,
"There are 10,000 links that come from example1.com. These were links that I previously paid for. I now realize that this is against the quality guidelines and I have had those links removed (or nofollowed)."
I'd do the same thing for all of my bad links.
If I had any where I couldn't get the links removed or nofollowed I would say this:
"There are xxxx links from example2.com. I have contacted the webmaster by sending an email to **admin@example1.com. **Here is a copy of my email:....
...I also found this email in the WHOIS data for the site and sent an email which you can see here....
...I heard no response, so I used a contact form on the site and have yet to hear back from them. "
I would make sure that I had an explanation for every single link pointing to my site. I wouldn't try to hide anything.
I would end with something like this,
"Thanks again for considering my request. From this point on I am committed to following the Quality Guidelines."
In the past it would take ages to get a response (and some webmasters never did) but Google has upgraded their response time. Most requests now get a response within 3-14 days.
Good luck!
-
Daniel,
One thing that I know in terms of how timely is that it will depend as much on what you submit as it will on Google. First, you have to show what you have done to change the issue. If there are communications between you and a paid directory where you are not getting any response or action, show that communication.
Avoid, the temptation to try to 'cosmetically' fix this by changing alt text, anchor text, etc. Remember, this will be looked at by humans. With it being four to five sites, your work should be easier so long as you have a lot of communication with the linking sites showing your efforts to end or ameliorate.Alan is very correct when he says, "Don't think you can keep sending them in because, from what I've read, they will eventually st listening."
Get every duck in a row,
Make sure a bunch are gone, if, they are going to the trouble to nofollow, why not eliminate altogether?
No point saying, I asked them all but no one complied....
Only when there is massive evidence of your effort to fix it would I ask for reconsideration.
Good luck,
Robert
-
Honesty pays, I think. Google knows pretty much what you did. The engine guesses, but when a live body checks on your request, it's not likely you will fool them. They know which sites sell paid links. If someone else also paid for links from that site and they already did a reinclusion request and said they bought links from that site, you paint a target on yourself if you don't own up to it - unless you really didn't buy the links.
You could wait up to a month for any response, going on past history. Be sure you're disclosing everything you know about in one request. Don't think you can keep sending them in because, from what I've read, they will eventually stop listening.
I can't help you with protocol, other than to say spell it all out because they can't read your mind and expecting them to guess probably won't work in your favor.
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
-
Internal pages ranking over the homepage: How to optimise to rank better at Google?
Hi, We have experienced a shift in SERP from internal pages ranking over website homepage for more than a year. Previously website homepages used to rank for the primary keyword like moz.com for "SEO". Now we can see that internal pages like moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo been ranking for the primary keyword "SEO". Google is picking up these "what is ABC" pages than the homepage. All our competitor sites are ranking with these internal pages which are about "what is (primary keyword)". We do have the same internal pages "what is....", but this pages is not ranking; only our homepage is ranking. Moreover we dropped more than 15 positions after this shift in SERP. How to diagnose this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Very strange, inconsistent and unpredictable Google ranking
I have been searching through these forums and haven't come across someone that faces the same issue I am. The folks on the Google forums are certain this is an algorithm issue, but I just can't see the logic in that because this appears to be an issue fairly unique to me. I'll take you through what I've gone through. Sorry for it being long. Website URL: https://fenixbazaar.com 1. In early February, I made the switch to https with some small hiccups. Overall however the move was smooth, had redirects all in place, sitemap, indexing was all fine. 2. One night, my organic traffic dropped by almost 100%. All of my top-ranking articles completely disappeared from rank. Top keyword searches were no longer yielding my best performing articles on the front page of results, nor on the last page of results. My pages were still being indexed, but keyword searches weren't delivering my pages in results. I went from 70-100 active users to 0. 3. The next morning, everything was fine. Traffic back up. Top keywords yielding results for my site on the front page. All was back to normal. Traffic shot up. Only problem was the same issue happened that night, and again for the next three nights. Up and down. 4. I had a developer and SEO guy look into my backend to make sure everything was okay. He said there were some redirection issues but nothing that would cause such a significant drop. No errors in Search Console. No warnings. 5. Eventually, the issue stopped and my traffic improved back to where it was. Then everything went great: the site was accepted into Google News, I installed AMP pages perfectly and my traffic boomed for almost 2 weeks. 6. At this point numerous issues with my host provider, price increases, and incredibly outdated cpanel forced me to change hosts. I did without any issues, although I lost a number of articles albeit low-traffic ones in the move. These now deliver 404s and are no longer indexed in the sitemap. 7. After the move there were a number of AMP errors, which I resolved and now I sit at 0 errors. Perfect...or so it seems. 8. Last week I applied for hsts preload and am awaiting submission. My site was in working order and appeared set to get submitted. I applied after I changed hosts. 9. The past 5 days or so has seen good traffic, fantastic traffic to my AMP pages, great Google News tracking, linking from high-authority sites. Good performance all round. 10. I wake up this morning to find 0 active people on my site. I do a Google search and notice my site isn't even the first result whenever I do an actual search for my name. The site doesn't even rank for its own name! My site is still indexed but search results do not yield results for my actual sites. Check Search Console and realised the sitemap had been "processed" yesterday with most pages indexed, which is weird because it was submitted and processed about a week earlier. I resubmitted the sitemap and it appears to have been processed and approved immediately. No changes to search results. 11. All top-ranking content that previously placed in carousal or "Top Stories" in Google News have gone. Top-ranking keywords no longer bring back results with my site: I went through the top 10 ranking keywords for my site, my pages don't appear anywhere in the results, going as far back as page 20 (last page). The pages are still indexed when I check, but simply don't appear in search results. It's happening all over again! Is this an issue any of you have heard of before? Where a site is still being indexed, but has been completely removed from search results, only to return within a few hours? Up and down? I suspect it may be a technical issue, first with the move to https, and now with changing hosts. The fact the sitemap says processed yesterday, suggests maybe it updated and removed the 404s (there were maybe 10), and now Google is attempting to reindexed? Could this be viable? The reason I am skeptical of it being an algorithm issue is because within a matter of hours my articles are ranking again for certain keywords. And this issue has only happened after a change to the site has been applied. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | fenixbazaar0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://moz.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Google Reconsideration - To do or not to do?
We haven't been manually penalized by Google yet but we have had our fair share of things needing to be fixed; malware, bad links, lack/if no content, lack-luster UX, and issues with sitemaps & redirects. Should we still submit a reconsideration even though we haven't had a direct penalty? Does hurt us to send it?
Algorithm Updates | | GoAbroadKP0 -
Does a KML file have to be indexed by Google?
I'm currently using the Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress to generate my KML file which is linked to from the GeoSitemap. Check it out http://www.holycitycatering.com/sitemap_index.xml. A competitor of mine just told me that this isn't correct and that the link to the KML should be a downloadable file that's indexed in Google. This is the opposite of what Yoast is saying... "He's wrong. 🙂 And the KML isn't a file, it's being rendered. You wouldn't want it to be indexed anyway, you just want Google to find the information in there. What is the best way to create a KML? Should it be indexed?
Algorithm Updates | | projectassistant1 -
Google and Wikipedia
Ok, I love Wikipedia as much as the next guy but the amount of weight that google puts on this site is getting crazy. My search terms that I am going after are "speakers" and "loudspeakers" Can somebody tell me why wikipedia needs the top 8 -10 spots for those terms? is that really a good search result for users of google? More of a rant then a question I know. I just needed to get that off my chest!.
Algorithm Updates | | kevin48030 -
Google.ca English and French returning different rankings
French Keyword : "Chauffage électrique" Currently Ranking 4th on Google.ca (French) It is not even top 50 on Google.ca (English) Why so much gap between them? Both are on Google.ca, just different language. Also, when searching the keyword on Google.ca (English), all the results shown are in french anyway ! Why is mine way off ? How can I help the ranking on the EN version? Why does Google.ca FR and EN have different rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | Kezber0 -
Anyone have stats on numbers of Google users searching while logged in?
In light of Google's recent "social search update", I am curious to know how many Google users perform searches while logged into their Google account thereby showing "social results".
Algorithm Updates | | Gyi0