Does "Reconsideration Request" really work?

[epmaniac]

Does reconsideration request really work?

I am thinking of submitting for reconsideration after a major overhaul of my site.

Has anyone submitted for reconsideration after Oct 22 update and the recent panda update?

What was the response? Did it work?

[deadsea]

If you were hit by a algorithm update, a reconsideration request probably will not be effective. Google recently said that reconsideration requests are only for removing manual penalties placed on your site once you have fixed the issue.

However, they have also admitted to white lists to keep sites from being scored badly on specific algorithms. Perhaps a reconsideration request could get you on one of these white lists.

[Planet13]

did you do anything "wrong" that you might have been penalized for (and which you have corrected)?

Because if it is a manual penalty, then I think that Matt Cutts has said that a reconsideration request can help reduce the time it will take to rank again.

But that is for a manual penalty.

If you search youtube there are a couple of videos from google about reconsideration requests and penalties.

[Pjman]

about a year ago, we definitely had a penalty. it took us while to find out what was wrong. we submit 2 reconsiderations and nothing. then we found the smoking gun. 2 days after that reconsideration was processed we came storming back.

we did great up until panda. In the past a reconsideration request would be processed in 2 weeks tops. I'm almost 4 weeks in waiting for the current on to be processed. I filed it after panda and removing boatloads of worthless user generated content. 2 hours after I processed it Matt came out with the algorithm shifts won't be helped by reconsiderations, I guess we'll see.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

To me a reconsideration request would require that you know what was wrong with the site, be it an intentional issue or not. You can't re-assure them that it won't be an ongoing problem unless you know what "it" is to begin with.

That being said it can't hurt to try, there is little to lose.

[Nagani]

I made a reconsideration request about 17 days ago. Still waiting. No changes up until now. My problem seems to be algorithmic. Only one major keyword is affected.

[kd454]

I am not sure if they work or not.. but if you don't not know what the issue is, it could make Matt Cutt's angry and you don't what to do that.

A Matt Cutt's tweet-
“Don't lie in a reconsideration request. Just don't go there at all. Makes Matt *angry*! Matt smash spam!”

[tedster]

Simple answer - yes. I have five cases where a reconsideration request was followed by restored rankings in about a week. The forum here has other similar reports. I am also sure the requests always get read, but sometimes the answer is "no".