How to understand if Google Reconsideration Request has been approved?

[zehrila]

My site was penalized in 2008, i could never properly understand why i got penalised, however, i kept on adding unique content thinking it shall come out some day, but it never did. Infact 99% of my long tail keywords were dropped but my main keyword stood at number one spot and couple of long tail keywords.

Late last year i started to investigate the issue and also posted a thread in forum, in which i was pointed at some issues which i fixed, i further discussed it with some guys and brought a lot of changes into site and last week i filed a reconsideration request. Today i got the response that now site has been reviewed.

I instantly went to check ranking for my long tail keywords, now some of the keywords with fresh meta titles are back in serps, usually first page or second but majority of keywords are still no where to be found (i checked the cache of those pages and they all show old metas). I was wondering if site comes back in steps or its almost instant, just like turning on light?

[tedster]

Your request was "reviewed" That's all you know for sure - and that's usually all anyone knows. Some ranking problems get removed immediately and some get removed in slow steps.

majority of keywords are still no where to be found

Does that mean some of the long tail words are ranking?

[zehrila]

Yes just few, my over all traffic is kinda unchanged, may be increased by 1k, which could be due to someother reason. I have a feeling my request has been denied. I had deoptimized my site to max, i didn't change the url structure tho. I wrote a detailed report with images and hosted it on my domain, it took me several months to make all those changes, but it looks like all my efforts have been wasted.

I shall now change the url structure from widgets.com/category-widgets/product-name-widgets.html to widgets.com/category/product-name.html and delete some categories and a lot of other pages ( that is the last option ) and file a second request, just wondering how long i should wait before i can submit a second request?

[tedster]

Why do you feel that your original url structure would be the cause of a penalty?

[brinked]

isnt it funny how you have to de-optimize in order to optimize for google. excessive use of a keyword(s) will get you filtered...the good news is once you correct it...recovery is usually pretty quick...do one thing at a time though...dont go into panic mode.

[tedster]

OK, I can see that too much keyword repetition within the file path might be problematic.

isnt it funny how you have to de-optimize in order to optimize for google.

You used to need to shout your relevance signals at the top of your voice just to get Google to hear you. Now, they've got a hearing aid or something. Bottom line is that such keyword repetition would only be done in order to rank better - it's not "natural", in other word

[zehrila]

Tedster: My urls are like this

widgets.com/category-widgets/product-name-widgets.html

and my breadcrumbs are like this

home > category widgets > product name widgets

bread crumbs are actual links.

Now i feel like this could be the only cause, because all other causes have been fixed. I plan to change the url structure to widgets.com/category/product-name.html it might have a diverse effect on my serps but i gotta try it. For breadcrumbs i am going to use Home > Category > Product Name

Brinked: You are right, excessive keyword use has probably triggered this penalty, not sure tho, could be something else as well. I have had tried several things but nothing seems to work, I had assured google for 100% unique and genuine content, but still.