Can I only submit a reconsideration request if I have a penalty?
-
Hey guys,
One of the sites I'm looking after took a hit with their rankings (particularly for one keyword that went from 6/7 to 50+) post-Penguin in May. Although, after cleaning-up the link profile somewhat we started to see some slow and steady progression in positions.
The keyword that dropped to 50+ was moving upwards in advance of 20. However, a couple of weeks back, the keyword in question took another slide towards 35-40. I therefore wondered whether it would be best to submit a reconsideration request - even though the site did not receive a manual penalty.
The website has a DA of 40 which more than matches a lot of the competitor websites that are ranking on first page for the aforementioned keyword. At this stage, I would have expected the site to have returned to its original ranking - four-and-a-half months after Penguin - but it hasn't. So a reconsideration request seemed logical.
That said, when I came to go through the process on Webmaster Tools I was unable to find the option! Has it now been removed for sites that don't receive manual penalties?
-
You CAN submit a reconsideration if you want to, but in the case of purely algorithmic non-manual penalties you will just get a response that says, "there are no manual penalties on your site right now" and no change to your rankings. My opinion is that it's pointless unless you have a manual penalty OR honestly think your site has been unfairly impacted or attacked.
-
Hello Matthew,
I will give a different angle to your quote:
"If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our Webmaster Guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site."
You mentioned "Cleaning-up profile" so in a way you admit to google that you believed that the profile WAS violating quality guidelines. I will also assume that you did not receive a manual penalty warning thus do not submit a reconsideration request, no need to hit alarms when its not needed.
Manual penalties most of the times mean that someone reported your web site for spam. What you describe seems as an algorithm update that your site didnt pass resulting in position dropping. Should you fix the problems you should get your #SERP back, if not carry on working the way you did (that is adding good content, getting Tier one authoritative links and removing the spammy ones).
Hope this helps!
-
have you seen this conversation and especially the last statement there (JohnMu)?
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/SH56eHjNEL0
it seems that you don`t have the option at the moment...
-
Here is what Google says;
"If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our Webmaster Guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site."
I've bolded the key bit. According to that, I should be able to submit a reconsideration. Trouble is, there is doesn't appear to be anywhere to option to do it! There is nothing under the Manual Actions tab to click.
-
take a look at this post:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.de/2013/06/backlinks-and-reconsideration-requests.html
this should help you to answer your question
to sum it up: there should be a valid reason why you submit a reconsideration request... what "valid reason" might be can be found in the article of google (link above)
-
Did you look for a warning in webmaster tools under search traffic - > manual actions.
If you see something in there, a button called 'request a review' is there to submit a request.
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
-
Using Brand value for SEO: Can we use keyword with brand name?
Hi Moz community, I am curious to know this. Let's say there is a brand value for a company. It has it's own popularity that it's been mentioned across the internet and social media directly with brand name without their service or industry keyword. Now if the company started promoting themselves like keyword along with their brand name, will it help them to rank for that keyword. For example, Moz is already famous, now they want to rank for "SEO" and related keywords, so they started calling themselves on internet "Moz SEO"; will this fetch them in ranking for keyword SEO? My ultimate question is, using primary keyword along with brand name will work out in ranking for that primary keyword or not? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
SEO Myth-Busters -- Isn't there a "duplicate content" penalty by another name here?
Where is that guy with the mustache in the funny hat and the geek when you truly need them? So SEL (SearchEngineLand) said recently that there's no such thing as "duplicate content" penalties. http://searchengineland.com/myth-duplicate-content-penalty-259657 by the way, I'd love to get Rand or Eric or others Mozzers aka TAGFEE'ers to weigh in here on this if possible. The reason for this question is to double check a possible 'duplicate content" type penalty (possibly by another name?) that might accrue in the following situation. 1 - Assume a domain has a 30 Domain Authority (per OSE) 2 - The site on the current domain has about 100 pages - all hand coded. Things do very well in SEO because we designed it to do so.... The site is about 6 years in the current incarnation, with a very simple e-commerce cart (again basically hand coded). I will not name the site for obvious reasons. 3 - Business is good. We're upgrading to a new CMS. (hooray!) In doing so we are implementing categories and faceted search (with plans to try to keep the site to under 100 new "pages" using a combination of rel canonical and noindex. I will also not name the CMS for obvious reasons. In simple terms, as the site is built out and launched in the next 60 - 90 days, and assume we have 500 products and 100 categories, that yields at least 50,000 pages - and with other aspects of the faceted search, it could create easily 10X that many pages. 4 - in ScreamingFrog tests of the DEV site, it is quite evident that there are many tens of thousands of unique urls that are basically the textbook illustration of a duplicate content nightmare. ScreamingFrog has also been known to crash while spidering, and we've discovered thousands of URLS of live sites using the same CMS. There is no question that spiders are somehow triggering some sort of infinite page generation - and we can see that both on our DEV site as well as out in the wild (in Google's Supplemental Index). 5 - Since there is no "duplicate content penalty" and there never was - are there other risks here that are caused by infinite page generation?? Like burning up a theoretical "crawl budget" or having the bots miss pages or other negative consequences? 6 - Is it also possible that bumping a site that ranks well for 100 pages up to 10,000 pages or more might very well have a linkuice penalty as a result of all this (honest but inadvertent) duplicate content? In otherwords, is inbound linkjuice and ranking power essentially divided by the number of pages on a site? Sure, it may be some what mediated by internal page linkjuice, but what's are the actual big-dog issues here? So has SEL's "duplicate content myth" truly been myth-busted in this particular situation? ??? Thanks a million! 200.gif#12
Algorithm Updates | | seo_plus0 -
Can a page be 100% topically relevant to a search query?
Today's YouMoz post, Accidental SEO Tests: When On-Page Optimization Ceases to Matter, explores the theory that there is an on-page optimization saturation point, "beyond which further on-page optimization no longer improves your ability to rank" for the keywords/keyword topics you are targeting. In other words, you can optimize your page for search to the point that it is 100% topically relevant to query and intent. Do you believe there exists such a thing as a page that is 100% topically relevant? What are your thoughts regarding there being an on-page optimization saturation point, beyond which further on-page optimization no longer improves your ability to rank? Let's discuss!
Algorithm Updates | | Christy-Correll1 -
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 -
Can someone explain the attached rankings?
I just don't understand how we can have a long list of 1's and 2's in google, but in Yahoo and Bing, some are close, some are in the 20's and some are not even in the top 50. Is there something that Yahoo and Bing care about, that google doesn't? I know about the meta language being more important for Yahoo and Bing than Google, so I added that. There's nothing I can do about the domain age, which I know is important to Yahoo and Bing. Is there anything else? thanks, Ruben [URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/Vem594l][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG][/URL]) [IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/Vem594l.jpg[/IMG])
Algorithm Updates | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
I can't understand why I am not rank one on SERPS
Hi Guys, I really cannot understand why I am no longer rank 1 on SERPs? My link data shows great weight in comparison to competitors, my on page SEO is good, nice and diverse on the alt text. I know there are a lot of factors that effect SERPs but I believe I have done well but am still not ranking? Have I missed something?
Algorithm Updates | | TomLondon
I really appreciate any thoughts and ideas. Thanks,
Tom0 -
Google penalty for one keyword?
Is it possible to get penalized by Google for a specific keyword and essentially disappear from the SERPs for that keyword but keep position for the brand (#1) and some other keywords (#4 and #7)? And how would you find out that this is what happened if there is no GWT message?
Algorithm Updates | | gfiedel0 -
Since authorship markup requires a domain email, how can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile?
It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0