Filing A Google Reconsideration Request? For Best Results, Use The Same Language As Your Site

Does Google not support reconsideration requests in Italian or other non-English languages? Yes, it does, and might even give detailed advice. But if you want that, you have to ask in your native language.

The situation came up recently in a blog post by Gianluca Fiorelli. It covered how an Italian site owner received a weird response from Google after submitting a couple reconsideration requests. The response said:

We’ve found that the majority of your site’s content is in a language we do not currently support.

It was strange because we know Google responds to reconsideration requests for sites in languages beyond English.

Matt Cutts of Google clarified in a comment on Hacker News that the response was given because the site owner submitted the request in English but for an Italian-language site. That triggered the request to go to an English speaker.

Google probably could have helped avoid confusion by forwarding the request to an Italian speaker rather than sending back a response suggesting that Italian isn’t a supported language. But the reason that happen was because of an experiment Google is running.

In some cases, Google will select reconsideration requests to get a more detailed response from Google. Cutts explained this in a recent video about half way in. But here’s the catch — this is done only for English-language sites at the moment, Google says.

To recap:

• Anyone can file a reconsideration request, and it’s probably best to do so in the language that matches the language of your site.
• Some reconsiderations requests, if for English-language sites, might get a more detailed response