Google Advice On When To Submit Reconsideration Request & How To Clean Your Link Profile

Google posted a new article today answering common questions about submitting reconsideration requests and managing your backlink profile. Google Search Quality representatives, Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, co-authored the article, going through the more common questions on this topic. Google says you should really only submit a reconsideration request when you receive a manual penalty […]

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google-webmaster-tools-video-1330350240Google posted a new article today answering common questions about submitting reconsideration requests and managing your backlink profile.

Google Search Quality representatives, Kaspar Szymanski and Uli Lutz, co-authored the article, going through the more common questions on this topic.

Google says you should really only submit a reconsideration request when you receive a manual penalty but if you are unsure if you have a manual or algorithmic penalty, submitting the request “is fine,” Google said.

Other tips include:

  • Only submit the reconsideration request after you take action to fix the issues with your site.
  • Use Google’s “links to your site” report within Webmaster Tools to analyze bad links pointing to your site.
  • Remove bad links by disavowing them, nofollowing them and having them completely removed.
  • When submitting a reconsideration request, provide a detailed explanation of what you changed and why.
  • Responses for reconsideration request can take a few days but may take much longer depending on the site and current workload.
  • Googlers review each reconsideration request manually.

For more details, check out the article at the Google blog.

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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