"No manual penalty" message, but rankings came back

[realmaverick]

I kid you not. I started a new affiliate website website several months ago and quickly gained a number 1 position for my target keywords. It then went from 1 to around 600-700 for my targeted keywords.

It stayed this way for 3 months, so I submitted a reconsideration request to Google. They emailed me back and informed me that there was no manual penalty and that it must have been algorithmic.

I then did a search for my target keywords, and all of my number 1 ranks were back. I'd only checked several hours before and they were all hovering around 600+.

I'm also certain that they visited my website. It's a website targeting UK traffic and minutes before the email, there was a visit from California. The first US visit in the lifetime of the website.

So the question is, why did they tell me there was no manual penalty and then my ranks suddenly re-appeared? I'm pretty sure they didn't update the algorithm for me :D

[Content_ed]

All right, you made me look:-) No change for my site that just reported no manual penalty.

[johnhh]

Happened the same way for us back in 2005. Hopefully you should be good until update Elephant, Rhino, Polar Bear or whatever comes next...

[realmaverick]

I found it most strange. I guess not many others did :D

[GlobalMax]

What changes did you make prior to submitting your reconsideration request, and did you make further changes while awaiting their response?

Also, perhaps you coincidentally cross a 90-day penalty expiration around the same time as their response.

[martinacastro]

I also found in Google forum people that says that google team gives the standard message "some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines" as a kind of an auto message that remains until a time period (45 / 90 / 180 days) after you clean the site...

People, what do you think about?

[tedster]

People say all kinds of things. I wouldn't put too much credence in that.

[McMohan]

I'm pretty sure they didn't update the algorithm for me :D

the algorithmic penalty must have been so silly that Google must have changed the Algorithm for you!

[Wouter_Blom]

matt cutts insists that most of the changes back are from algoritmic nature. ( if it is violating it will still be punnished)

It could be that the google person or a separate google algorithem checked your website and found it did not violate the terms. It would make sense to check by algorithem before a human would check it. THAT would result in : not a manual penalty

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Saying there is no manual penalty is a bit misleading since it may very well have been a set of human evaluators that gave your site poor ratings which in turn caused the algo to slam you down 600 spots in serps. Technically not a manual penalty but sure as heck caused by manual actions...

[martinacastro]

something to share reading G Webmaster Forum

One person recieve early today a message saying that " If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site."

and later today he recieve one saying that "your site violates the quality guidelines"?

Is the first time that I see this... perhaps people more expert knows about this ...

seems that a supervisor revoke the first message of today?

[CovertSEO]

" If we don't find any problems, we'll reconsider our indexing of your site."

. This suggest that the site is yet to be evaluated. As such if it met quality guidelines it would be indexed. Having reviewed the site it appeared that it did not meet the benchmark and as a consequence the standard template of "your site violates the quality guidelines" came into effect. In short there is nothing to support any decision being overridden.