Will a Reconsideration Request Invite More Scrutiny from Google?

[rimam1]

Hey guys,

I have a big authority site that got hit pretty badly. I was ranking on page 1 for a few high traffic terms, but I installed a WP plugin which completely killed my rankings.

I'm thinking of doing a reconsideration request but was wondering if Google would look at my other domains. In other words, will a reconsideration request invite unwanted attention by a Google engineer to all of my other sites hosted on the same IP, using the same Analytics account, etc.?

Thanks,
Raza

[Saxydez]

Yes, if you were to send in a reconsideration request you will definitely receive the unwanted attention due to the fact that the Google engineers want to find the full reasoning behind your request. With it basically being considered a "background" check, they will go through all of your sites connected on the same IP address to see if everything is legit. If you do not want that attention I definitely do not advise sending the request.

[webdevpro]

Different sites on same IP should not be a problem (e.g. in shared hosting 1000's of site have the same IP but different owners) but the same Analytics code can let them build a relationship between all your sites. It will be better if you can install different code before making a request.

[bhuff85]

Originally Posted by Saxydez

Yes, if you were to send in a reconsideration request you will definitely receive the unwanted attention due to the fact that the Google engineers want to find the full reasoning behind your request. With it basically being considered a "background" check, they will go through all of your sites connected on the same IP address to see if everything is legit. If you do not want that attention I definitely do not advise sending the request.

If you are using shady tactics or doing something you shouldn't, a reconsideration request may cause your site to suffer. However, if that's the case, Google would eventually catch up to it in some way, shape or form down the road.

I had a great deal of my Adsense sites get de-indexed back in September. The reason behind it? Someone reported them (most likely a competitor) as "spam". Whoever decided to pull the plug that day did, causing me to lose out on an entire month of income. Put in 2 different reconsideration requests and they ended up turning everything back over, finding out that my websites were not spam.

Thankfully after all of that hoopla, everything was restored overnight. Rankings were tarnished for about a week or two though, but after a little SEO work, I managed to recover most of my previous rankings. It sucked, but I worked hard for what I had and knew that my websites were 99% better than the spun-jibberish websites that were covering the front page for my keywords.

To the OP - My situation was different, simply because my sites were de-indexed. It sounds like you may have been hit with a penalty of some sort. If I were you, I would get rid of the plugin and try to work on your site more. Grab authority links and add more quality content. Give it some time and see where it goes from there.

If you still find yourself deep in the SERPS and you're confident in your site, why not give a reconsideration request a shot? I think it's worth it, but only after you've exhausted all of your other options of getting your site back on top.

[RedWaterDub]

Hi there,

One of my sites and all its pages has recently been penalized by G and they all dropped from the top positions on first page of google to the 6th page. I thought it was because of aggressive link-building and made a recon request explaining I used a bad seo helper...blah...but guess what happened?

The site was dropped even further..now it is not even in the first 100 pages... I think what happened was after my reco req they looked harder at my site and found even more problems...

so I would be very careful about recon request unless all your sites are TOS compliant etc

[jimbo61]

Unless you are whiter than white, let it go, as you will bring unwanted attention to the other properties you own, and that could turn a problem into a catastrophe.

[rimam1]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm just going to let it go. I've been doing a lot of linking using blog networks, so I think I've been too aggressive and I definitely don't want Google coming down harder on my other sites.

Thanks for the feedback again.

Raza