Can I only submit a reconsideration request if I have a penalty?

[Webrevolve]

Hey guys,

One of the sites I'm looking after took a hit with their rankings (particularly for one keyword that went from 6/7 to 50+) post-Penguin in May. Although, after cleaning-up the link profile somewhat we started to see some slow and steady progression in positions.

The keyword that dropped to 50+ was moving upwards in advance of 20. However, a couple of weeks back, the keyword in question took another slide towards 35-40. I therefore wondered whether it would be best to submit a reconsideration request - even though the site did not receive a manual penalty.

The website has a DA of 40 which more than matches a lot of the competitor websites that are ranking on first page for the aforementioned keyword. At this stage, I would have expected the site to have returned to its original ranking - four-and-a-half months after Penguin - but it hasn't. So a reconsideration request seemed logical.

That said, when I came to go through the process on Webmaster Tools I was unable to find the option! Has it now been removed for sites that don't receive manual penalties?

[pauledwards]

Did you look for a warning in webmaster tools under search traffic - > manual actions.

If you see something in there, a button called 'request a review' is there to submit a request.

[dotfly]

take a look at this post:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.de/2013/06/backlinks-and-reconsideration-requests.html

this should help you to answer your question

to sum it up: there should be a valid reason why you submit a reconsideration request... what "valid reason" might be can be found in the article of google (link above)

[Webrevolve]

Here is what Google says;

"If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our Webmaster Guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site."

I've bolded the key bit. According to that, I should be able to submit a reconsideration. Trouble is, there is doesn't appear to be anywhere to option to do it! There is nothing under the Manual Actions tab to click.

[dotfly]

have you seen this conversation and especially the last statement there (JohnMu)?

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/SH56eHjNEL0

it seems that you don`t have the option at the moment...

[artdivision]

Hello Matthew,

I will give a different angle to your quote:

"If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or it's performing more poorly than it once did (and you believe that it does not violate our Webmaster Guidelines), you can ask Google to reconsider your site."

You mentioned "Cleaning-up profile" so in a way you admit to google that you believed that the profile WAS violating quality guidelines. I will also assume that you did not receive a manual penalty warning thus do not submit a reconsideration request, no need to hit alarms when its not needed.

Manual penalties most of the times mean that someone reported your web site for spam. What you describe seems as an algorithm update that your site didnt pass resulting in position dropping. Should you fix the problems you should get your #SERP back, if not carry on working the way you did (that is adding good content, getting Tier one authoritative links and removing the spammy ones).

Hope this helps!

[Carson-Ward]

You CAN submit a reconsideration if you want to, but in the case of purely algorithmic non-manual penalties you will just get a response that says, "there are no manual penalties on your site right now" and no change to your rankings. My opinion is that it's pointless unless you have a manual penalty OR honestly think your site has been unfairly impacted or attacked.