Tips on requesting reconsideration


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English captions:

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[Brian] Hi, I am Brian White and this is my
colleague Rachel and we are in the

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Search Quality team in Google in the
Webspam group. We are here today

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with some tips on the reconsideration
process.

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[Rachel] All right, let's start with the case
where you know your site has violated

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the Google guidelines. It is important
to admit any mistakes you've made

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and let us know what you've done to
try to fix them.

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Sometimes we get requests from
people who say:

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"My site adheres to the guidelines
now,"

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and that is not really enough
information for us.

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So, please be as detailed as possible.
Realize that there are people actually

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reading these requests, including the
people in this room.

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If you do not know what your site
might have done to get a penalty,

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go back to the Google guidelines and
reread them carefully

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before requesting reconsideration.

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Look at the things to avoid and ask
questions of people that work on your

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site, if you do not work on it yourself. If
you'd like the advice of a third party,

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you can also seek help in our Google
webmaster forum.

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[Brian] Sometimes we get a reconsideration
request or where the requester

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associates technical website issues
with a penalty.

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An example could be that the server
timed out for a while, or that bad

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content was delivered for a time, and
Google is pretty adaptive to these

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kinds of transient issues with websites.

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So people sometimes misread the
situation as "I have a penalty"

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and then seek reconsideration.

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And it is probably good idea to wait a
bit and see if things revert to their

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previous state.

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Some people attribute duplicate
content with leading to a penalty and

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usually the problem lies elsewhere.

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And say you are in a partnership with
someone else, say another website,

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and they put this combined effort
together in a way that goes against

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our quality guidelines and involve both
your website and theirs and then

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the end effort reflects badly on both.
You have control over your site, but

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sometimes it's hard to get stuff
cleaned up on sites you do not control.

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We are sympathetic to these
situations. Just make your best effort

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to document that in a complete
reconsideration request.

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In the case of say bad links that were
gathered, point us to a URL that

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shows your exhaustive effort to clean
that up.

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Also, we have pretty good tools
internally, so do not try to fool us as

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there are actual people, as Rachel
said, looking at your reports.

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If you intentionally pass along bad or
misleading information,

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we will disregard that request for
reconsideration.

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[Rachel] And please do not spam the
reconsideration form,

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it does not help to submit in multiple
requests all at the same time,

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just one detailed concise report and
just get it right the first time.

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Your request will be reviewed by a
member of our team and we do review

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them promptly, that said if you have
some new information to add about

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your site, go ahead and file a new
reconsideration request.

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And finally, if reconsideration does
happen, please be aware that it can

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take some time to notice when a
penalty has been lifted.

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We appreciate your patience.

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[Brian] Yes, the bottom line is we care very
deeply for our search engine users,

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and we want them to be happy and
not have to complain.

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So make sure that A) The issues are
fixed with your site

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before filing reconsideration, and B)
make sure that we don't have to worry

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about your site violating the quality
guidelines in the future.

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So, from the people who are part of
the reconsideration process

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from our end, thank you.

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[Rachel] Thank you.

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  • G959-2RlPyA-de.txt - on Jun 29, 2009 4:50 PM by Michael Wyszomierski (version 1)
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