Google Website Reconsider Request, it only takes 3 days!
March 14, 2008
Well that's my recent experience of a big site that is well known worldwide. It may be just as speedy for smaller sights too and I've got to take my hat off to Google for being so quick off the mark. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe reconsider requests were running low for March in Google, either way I think you need a genuine reason and here is how Google dealt with mine and a bit of a background overview:
- Big authority site gets redirected (301) from established keyword rich domain to newly bought exact match brand domain (three weeks ago).
- Organic traffic pretty consistent for a week whilst old site is still fairly well indexed. Organic traffic & rankings nose-dive at the start of the second week. Site can't rank in the top 50 in Google for its own brand with an exact match brand domain name and an established 301 redirected domain with the exact content that has heaps and heaps of backlinks pointing to it.
- Wait two further weeks with no further developments. Then put in a Google reconsider request explaining that the new domain has only recently been purchased and that the previous domain history/owner is unknown and due to extremely poor rankings over previous couple of weeks it is suspected that the site might have a penalty associated to it or maybe a duplicate content filter as the new domain had been significantly indexed before the 301 redirect was put in place {not my fault :)}.
- And as if by magic, 3 days later the site is ranking for its brand and many of the previous highly competitive keyphrases and pretty much back to where it was before the site migration.
I would have taken a month of organic downtime traffic at the start, but I was suspicious of the inability to rank for sites own brand name and after a courtesy of three weeks and reading Matt's reconsider request I thought it was time I should do something about it.
As Matt Cutts points out, it is no longer called a reinclusion request:
not every spam penalty results in removal from Google's index, so "reconsideration" is more accurate than "reinclusion”.
Needless to say I was very pleased and could wipe the sweat of my brow one last time when someone asked me why the site no longer ranked for its own brand name.
Coincidently, it appears that you can now get penalty notifications from Google Webmaster Central for future domain owners which may shine more light in these types of circumstances.
The reconsider request is there to help out when sites really do need it most and I hope it is used with the consideration it deserves as I'd hate for it to be removed due to “every man and his dog” whacking in a silly nilly request. If such a request is used inappropriately, this is probably a pretty good way to piss Google off. So here's a big cry out to 'all men with dogs', this is not the golden ticket for eternal Google love and you may do more bad than good!
{Sorry I have neglected the blog for so long, I will try to be much better in the future:) }
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Hi Joe,
We had a similar experience with our own site. Pretty quick turnaround by Google. You can read about it here http://www.seoverflow.com/blog/seo/welcome-back-to-google-a-reconsideration-request-with-a-happy-ending/
Hi Mike,
Glad to see it turned out good for you too. Google will speak to you on the phone for hours about PPC, but all you get for SEO is web form. As block-box as it may be, it beats writing to farther christmas as Google listens to adults too!