Is There Fallout From An Unneeded Reconsideration Request?

[JonBMX3]

One of my client's unnecessarily submitted a reconsideration request... and - whoa! big surprise - he didn't meet their guidelines.

FWIW - they did this against my judgement, for one of many reasons... the primary reason being:

THEY NEVER RECEIVED AN UNNATURAL LINKS WARNING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Anyone experienced something similar? What was the fallout?

[tedster]

I've never seen any negative fallout from ann unneeded RR. What did you mean by "he didn't meet their guidelines"? Was that a return message he received?

[Andy Langton]

I would second Tedster, never seen a negative impact from a reconsideration request.

I don't doubt that it would be possible to have a site breaking guidelines that drew attention to itself via reconsideration, but I figure they have so many requests that the likeliest occurrence is to receive a boilerplate 'no manual action' response if the reconsideration is unnecessary. I doubt there's enough time to manually review request that aren't needed!

As Ted says, which guideline did Google suggest the site did not comply with?

[scooterdude]

The only time I read an account of zero negative consequences from an unrequired/rejected reconsideration request, its invariably posted by a very shortlist of about 10 people or so

Same ones everytime, pour quoi ?


Perhaps googles response really does depend on whose Google acount is making the request?

Perhaps one might consider that not all enjoy the same level of "rapport" with google Spam busters and perhaps ones advice to the "plebs" might reflect this

[Andy Langton]

Perhaps googles response really does depend on whose Google acount is making the request?

That certainly doesn't apply in my case. I would always recommend that responses be sent from someone with reasonable clout at the website/company involved, not least to show that there has been a level of business understanding of the issues.

[scooterdude]

The issue is not the level of responsibility for the website , rather its the website owner/controllers relationship with Google

They know an trust you, alls well, "Don't worry, theres no problem, there, have another 1,000 uniques a day for your trouble, see you at the pub,,"


You a stranger or being flagged for stuff they don't like , actioned or waiting action, your site is unlikely to avoid a fine tooth comb, 'negative lenses on' review


I am just guessing an making it up,dramatising, so, no offense intended to any :)

[klark0]

There had to have been a manual action in place on the website. Yes, those can happen without a message being sent first.

If there were no manual actions, then you would have gotten an auto reply saying so. Your client did the right thing. At least now you know.

[JonBMX3]

Thank you everyone for the insight.

And yes, based on their keyword visibility pre-Penguin (1600+ keywords in top 20, according to SEMRush) and two months post-Penguin (*20 keywords* in the top 20), plus their status as an EMD for a high volume ecommerce keyword - it would seem some form of manual penalty was bestowed upon them.

At the same time, I have taken the stance of disregarding the warning messages from the beginning - for many of the various conspiracy-theory reasons we've all read about and especially since the company commissioned link building services in response to their fall.

So, for instances where Google hadn't "seen any evil" (reception of warning message), I would have suggested the approach of "raising a hand" to admit to evil (submitting a recon request) would not be the best approach, and might have nothing but negative consequences.