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?
-
Thanks for the feedback! We are confident that there isn't anything 'black hat-ty' going on with our website; just lots of issues that have been heightened because of the updates this past year or two with no real movement from management to take action.
I was advised by our SEO consultant that we should submit a reconsideration because we have made a quite a few changes but still seem to have no impact, even thought, for instance, we have added over 250 articles to our main directory pages.
I guess I have to have a think on this, it seems from the few comments here, that we don't really have anything to gain, just opening ourselves up to Google's finer comb..
Hmm!!.... Thanks! SEOmozers
-
We have filed a few reconsideration requests in the past, and in all but one case I have received responses about there being no manual penalty.
A few years ago we had a site that had been manually penalized, but we did not know about it (no notification was sent to us through Google Webmaster Tools). After we sent a reconsideration request, the manual penalty on this site was removed.
For the sites that did not have a manual penalty, we have not seen any impact (negative or positive) as a result of the reconsideration request.
Since you know about several issues that are hurting your SEO performance, in your case I would likely work on those before contacting Google. I have only contacted Google for sites that I believe don't have significant issues.
-
As Mat said, you could be risking more scrutiny, so if you submit a recon request, be sure you can endure the attention your site will get.
However, I can see no possible gain to doing so. So why bother? All you'll get out of it is a message saying they found no manual action against your site, and advising you to check for other possible causes of a loss of traffic, yada, yada, yada... -
If you are (REALLY) confident that there is nothing off-white going on with your site and it's links then you theoretically have nothing to lose. Whether or not there is anything to gain is an oft-discussed point.
You would though be inviting to |Google to look manually at your link profile, so if you aren't so confident then there could be lots to lose.
For my money I wouldn't do a re-inclusion request without having received a penalty warning. If you haven't got a manual penalty then there is nothing to remove, so I don't see any gain.
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's Search Algorithm update to 'Local Snack Pack'
Hi there - I was wondering if anyone else has noticed a big shift in the Google Local 'snack pack' in the past 48 hours? We have noticed a big change in clients results - specifically today. Has anyone else noticed any changes or perhaps data on possible changes? I am aware of this update: https://www.seroundtable.com/big-google-search-algorithm-ranking-update-29953.html but perhaps there maybe another update since. Any input would be much appreciated! Phil.
Algorithm Updates | | Globalgraphics0 -
How serious is Google about internal linking report? Considers the links from sub-directories too?
Hi community members, It's been clearly said by Google to interlink the important pages across the website and they give top interlinked pages in "Links report". They do consider the links from the sub-directories like example.com/blog, etc. to sum up the internal linking . But we do employ multiple sub directories and link to various pages which may not be that important to rank, example "terms of use" page at footer section. So, obviously these non-important pages might be over linked as per the search console "internal links report". Will this make Google to consider the highest linked pages as most important and they try to give ranking importance to them? How about links from sub directories? Please clarify and share your opinions.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Any suggestions why I would rank 1 on google and be on 3rd page for bing/yahoo?
Currently the site I'm working on ranks very well on google rankings but then when we cross reference into yahoo and bing we are basically in the graveyard of keywords. (bottom of 3rd page). Why would that be? Any suggestions or things I can do to fix this or troubleshoot it? Here are some things I can think of that might affect this but not sure. 1. our sitemap hasn't been updated in months and URL changes have been made 2. Onsite for yahoo and bing is different from google? 3. Bing is just terrible in general? 4. Inbound links? This one doesn't make sense though unless the search engines rank links in different ways. All jokes aside I would really appreciate any help as currently the few top ranked keywords we have are about 30% of our organic traffic and would have a huge affect on the company if we were able to rank as we should across all platforms. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | JemJemCertified0 -
Anyone Notice Google's Latest Change Seems to Favor Google Books?
I've noticed a change in the search results lately. As I search around I notice a lot of results from books.google.com Seems a little (ok a lot) self serving... JMHO
Algorithm Updates | | get4it0 -
New Google Update In The Past Two Days???
Was there a new Google update in the past couple of days. Traffic on my test site has gone from ~ 1,000 per day to over 4,000 per day for no particular reason. Most of the traffic is still coming from Google and is not the result of any new major links. My keyword rankings also appear to be the same ...
Algorithm Updates | | Humanovation0 -
How could Google define "low quality experience merchants"?
Matt Cutts mentioned at SXSW that Google wants to take into consideration the quality of the experience ecommerce merchants provide and work this into how they rank in SERPs. Here's what he said if you missed it: "We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results.” My question; how exactly could Google decide if a merchant provides a low and high quality experience? I would image it would be very easy for Google to decide this with merchants in their Trusted Store program. I wonder what other data sets Google could realistically rely upon to make such a judgment. Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | BrianSaxon0 -
When did Google include display results per page into their ranking algorithm?
It looks like the change took place approx. 1-2 weeks ago. Example: A search for "business credit cards" with search settings at "never show instant results" and "50 results per page", the SERP has a total of 5 different domains in the top 10 (4 domains have multiple results). With the slider set at "10 results per page", there are 9 different domains with only 1 having multiple results. I haven't seen any mention of this change, did I just miss it? Are they becoming that blatant about forcing as many page views as possible for the sake of serving more ads?
Algorithm Updates | | BrianCC0