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
-
Google confused by trailing slash
My client has a page with the URL https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training/. Google won't index this page because it has detected a canonical at https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training (without the trailing slash). I can't find https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training without the trailing slash anywhere in our site. All the other page URLs end with the slash. How do I sort this out and convince Google that https://www.corptexsystems.ca/training/ is the version to index? Thanks in advance for your help, SEO masters! -AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
What should i do to index images in google webmaster?
My website onlineplants.com.au. It's a shopping cart website. I do have nearly 1200 images but none of the images are indexed in google webmaster? what should i do. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Verve-Innovation1 -
When will all of Google Maps be the same again?
As many of you are aware that the pigeon update was only applied to the new Google maps resulting in very different search results for Google local business. When you search for a business on old Google maps then you get totally different results vs the new Google maps. Some businesses totally disappeared completely from the search results. I have done my research and found out that it's because the new Algo was only applied to the new maps. Also new algo does not apply to other countries. Well the reason I posted this topic is because I have noticed that all the new Google Business listings I am verifying for my clients are all being put under the old Google maps and not the new ones. They come up fine when searching from old maps but not the new ones. I understand Google has not rolled out the pigeon on all data centers but why? Will Google eventually roll out the update to old maps? Since Google is adding businesses to old google maps then what's the point of even adding new listings?
Technical SEO | | bajaseo0 -
How Google sees my page
When looking for crawlability issues, what is the difference between using webmaster tools Fetch as google, looking at the cached pages in google index site:mypage.com, or using spider simulator tools.
Technical SEO | | shashivzw0 -
Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs
Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given. I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ
Technical SEO | | suchde0 -
Rankings for Google Play Pages
Hey all, I'm relatively new here and certainly new to posting in the forums and interacting with the community but I hope to be much more active in the coming months. I have what might be a silly question regarding search results for a Google Play store-specific query. The company in question has their main North American app that's been out for a month and a half and then an International version that was released just a few days ago. If you run a Google search (NOT a search witin Google Play) for 'Google Play Company Name' the more recent (but less used and ultimately less important, at least for the time being) International app is higher in the SERP than the more used and reviewed North American app. I'm guessing that this is something that will correct itself over the next week as the North American app establishes itself as the more important of the two, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask just in case there's something they can do to affect the results a little quicker. Any advice, input or just a verification of my guess would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Help - just disappeared from Google
My google listings have disappeared in the last few days. I used to have positions 1, 2, 3, and sometimes 4 on page 1, but since the last update (19th?) it appears I have been dropped? My domainn is www.eseyo.com and the search terms I used to acheive results for were "seo in brentwood" and "seo brentwood" I even created a screencast of my success some time ago for a blog post: http://www.eseyo.com/seo-in-brentwood/ Is there anything that I can do to get these listings back? I have not done anything too naughty in terms of tactics. Purchased a few fiver gigs to get some fake social likes but that is it the rest was all true links and listings. your help and advice most appreciated. Scott.
Technical SEO | | eseyo0 -
Rankings Last, google says no flags
I have a site thatsit.net.au I have never really promoted, but it used to
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
rank ok, the other day I decided I should spend some time on it as its my own
site and potential customers expect to see my own site rank well. I did a bit
of checking and in Bing I come up in first 4 for Web Development Perth, that is in
the .au TLD for Australia,
but in Google I am like 700+. If I take this line out of my home page and put it in quotes “a local Perth web development company” I see I am the only person in the world to have
this long tail query in both Bing and Google. If I search for the same without
quotes in Bing I come up first. If I do so in Google, I come up absolutely last.
I thought I must be flagged, but Google have replied that there is no manual
action taken on my site. I have no answer for this, It is hard to believe if I am the only person in
the world to have a long tail term that I would come last for it. Any ideas? I hope Matt Cutts reads this, and can come up with an explanation
besides write good and useful content.0