"We've processed your reconsideration request for www...." - Could this be good news?
-
Hey,
We recently had a Google Penguin related links warning and I've been going through Google WMT and removing the most offensive links. We have requested resubmission a couple of times and have had the standard response of:
"
Site violates Google's quality guidelinesWe received a request from a site owner to reconsider your site 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.
"On the 5th September after spending another couple more days removing the most prolific offenders we resubmitted the site again and again got the automated response saying they had received our request. A week later on the 13th September we got a slightly different response of :
"
We've processed your reconsideration requestWe received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index your site.
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 left it another couple of weeks to see if we'd get a slightly more in depth response however so far there has been nothing. I'll be honest in not being entirely sure what this means.
The e-mails says simultaneously 'We've now reviewed your site' (as in past tense) but then continues with "If we don't find any problems" which suggests a future tense. I’m unsure from reading the e-mail whether they have indeed reviewed it (and just not told us the outcome) or whether it’s just a delayed e-mail saying that they have received the reconsideration request.
Of course, if I received this e-mail off anyone other than Google I would have thought I was still in the dog house but the fact that it differs from the standard ‘Site violates Google’s quality guidelines’ message leads me to believe that something has changed and they may be happy with the site or at least happier than they were previously.
Has anybody else received the latter message and has anybody managed to determine exactly what it means?
Cheers guys!
-
Just to provide an update, we've continued to make cleanups and have done another couple of reconsideration requests and received the same response every time. I guess work must continue
-
I've wondered the same thing, we received the same response as you. And the ranking for the keyword we had been penalized went from page 15 to page 4. However around the same time we increased in rankings we had made some on page changes which optimised the page a bit better for that keyword.
It's hard to tell what exactly has happened!
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
-
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Is "Author Rank," User Comments Driving Losses for YMYL Sites?
Hi, folks! So, our company publishes 50+ active, disease-specific news and perspectives websites -- mostly for rare diseases. We are also tenacious content creators: between news, columns, resource pages, and other content, we produce 1K+ pieces of original content across our network. Authors are either PhD scientists or patients/caregivers. All of our sites use the same design. We were big winners with the August Medic update in 2018 and subsequent update in September/October. However, the Medic update in March and de-indexing bug in April were huge losers for us across our monetized sites (about 10 in total). We've seen some recovery with this early June update, but also some further losses. It's a mixed bag. Take a look at this attached MOZ chart, which shows the jumps and falls around the various Medic updates. The pattern is very similar on many of our sites. As per JT Williamson's stellar article on EAT, I feel like we've done a good job in meeting those criteria, which has left we wondering what isn't jiving with the new core updates. I have two theories I wanted to run past you all: 1. Are user comments on YMYL sites problematic for Google now? I was thinking that maybe user comments underneath health news and perspectives articles might be concerning on YMYL sites now. On one hand, a healthy commenting community indicates an engaged user base and speaks to the trust and authority of the content. On the other hand, while the AUTHOR of the article might be a PhD researcher or a patient advocate, the people commenting -- how qualified are they? What if they are spouting off crazy ideas? Could Google's new update see user comments such as these as degrading the trust/authority/expertise of the page? The examples I linked to above have a good number of user comments. Could these now be problematic? 2. Is Google "Author Rank" finally happening, sort of? From what I've read about EAT -- particularly for YMYL sites -- it's important that authors have “formal expertise” and, according to Williamson, "an expert in the field or topic." He continues that the author's expertise and authority, "is informed by relevant credentials, reviews, testimonials, etc. " Well -- how is Google substantiating this? We no longer have the authorship markup, but is the algorithm doing its due diligence on authors in some more sophisticated way? It makes me wonder if we're doing enough to present our author's credentials on our articles, for example. Take a look -- Magdalena is a PhD researcher, but her user profile doesn't appear at the bottom of the article, and if you click on her name, it just takes you to her author category page (how WordPress'ish). Even worse -- our resource pages don't even list the author. Anyhow, I'd love to get some feedback from the community on these ideas. I know that Google has said there's nothing to do to "fix" these downturns, but it'd sure be nice to get some of this traffic back! Thanks! 243rn10.png
Algorithm Updates | | Michael_Nace1 -
What Ranking Factors Impact Google News Visibility?
I'm just at the beginning of a new analysis involving Google News visibility and ranking factors, and thought I could put the project out to you, dear SEO geniuses, to get your ideas and perspectives. Backgrounder: My company operates over 50 niche, disease-specific daily news sites, covering science, research and advocacy news about specific diseases. Virtually all of them are in Google News. They range in age from 3 years old to 3 months old. Varying degrees of page rank / authority Content on the site is completely niche to specific diseases, and we have a lot of sites for rare and orphan diseases. Most of the content is news, but we also have info/resources pages, blogs, and some short-form posts made for use in social media. The Project: I want to do an analysis of keywords in our news headlines and see how certain keywords correlate with articles that do well -- both in terms of search traffic and overall with users. Going to use our Multiple Sclerosis News Today website. Most of our search traffic comes from Google News. What I hope to gain: I'm curious to see if certain sets of keywords that relate to the disease, to therapies, etc. drive the most traffic. I want to compare these keyword lists to how well we rank in organic search for the same keywords (via news articles or info pages) to see if there is a connection. I want to also create a working keyword list of the best-performing keywords in the news as a way of cross-pollinating content production on our blogs, info pages, social content, etc. I want to increase my knowledge base of ranking factors specific for Google News. The last point is really something I wish I knew more about. I feel like there aren't many knowledge resources out there about Google News. Is it safe to assume that the same on-site and off-site SEO best practices that govern organic search engine visibility are at play in Google News, or are there independent factors as well? I'd love to get your thoughts. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Michael_Nace0 -
What's the correct format when you Disavow a single page? with or without www.?
Hi Y'all. Can't seem to find an article on disavowing a single page. Do i use A, B, or submit both A and B? Example: A. http://disavowexample.com B. http://www.disavowexample.com Which one does Google prefer? I know for some I just find the canonical url of the page (which show www,) but wanted your expert advice! Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
How can a site with two questionable inbound links outperform sites with 500-1000 links good PR?
Our site for years was performing at #1 for but in the last 6 months been pushed down to about the #5 spot. Some of the domains above us have a handful of links and they aren't from good sources. We don't have a Google penalty. We try to only have links from quality domains but have been pushed down the SERP's? Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | northerncs0 -
Www vs nonwww domain
Since about 5 years out site was launched as "www.example.com" but last June 2012, we relaunched new design but somehow went without www subdmain - "http://example.com". We didn't check that time but now find duplicate pages and very confused what next. Please answer: Do search engines penalize for the change of domain name? www.example.com vs example.com? How can go back (or, should we really?) to www.example.com? I did redirect .htaccess rewrite from nonwww to www - but now our site is launched as without www. Confused so Please advise ASAP. Thanks a Million
Algorithm Updates | | GreenBirdMedia0 -
Someone just told me that the Google doesn't read past the pipe symbol. I find that hard to believe. Is this true?
Someone just told me that the Google doesn't read past the pipe symbol.
Algorithm Updates | | MarketingAgencyFlorida0 -
How long does a news article stay on Google's 'News' section on the SERP?
Our site is recognised as a news source for our niche - was just wondering if anyone had any idea how long the news story stays on the front page of the SERP once Google picks it up?
Algorithm Updates | | DanHill0