Reconsideration Request Survey from Google Search Quality Team

We had a penalty lifted two weeks ago and received a message from Google requesting the Site Owner to answer 6 questions to “help Google improve how handle reconsideration requests”.

Here’s a screenshot from our Gmail account with the message:

ss-reconq

Interestingly enough, the Google Search Quality Team stated that they manually process around 20,000 reconsideration requests each month!

Here’s the questions asked by Google in their survey:

Q1: Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you wish the reconsideration request process?

Q2: How helpful is the information in the initial message about the manual action taken on your site and how to fix it?

Q3: How helpful is the information in the messages you received in response to your reconsideration request?

Q4: How long do you expect a response to take after submitting your reconsideration request?

Q5: Select up to 3 resources you used the most to prepare your reconsideration request:

  1. Information in the initial message about the manual action
  2. Google Webmaster Tools Help Center (URL)
  3. Manual Action Viewer in Webmaster Tools (URL)
  4. Google Webmaster Central Forum (URL)
  5. Google Webmaster Central Blog (URL)
  6. Google Webmasters YouTube channel (URL)
  7. Google Hangout-On-Air office hours (URL)
  8. Non-Google affiliated discussion forum
  9. Non-Google affiliated help articles
  10. SEO company or specialist
  11. Friend or acquaintance
  12. Other (Fill in the blank)

Q6: Use the space below to explain your answer(s), provide additional comments to help us improve the reconsideration process, or provide feedback on this survey: (Information Box)

If they review over 20,000 requests per month, I wonder how many are duplicate submissions from webmasters expecting ‘prompt’ responses? Regardless of the origin of the reconsideration requests, Matt Cutts was quoted in the past that Google received around 5,000 letters per week, which is a daunting task for any team, as every situation is unique and requires a good bit of attention and time to review. I had once complained about the slowness in response time from the Google Search Quality Team, but my views have completely reversed since that time, as I can sympathize with the guys and gals at Google that have to read the wide variety of letters they receive from less-than-amiable website owners.

Did you receive one of these emails from Google after your manual penalty was lifted? If so, did you find the reconsideration request process helpful, timely, and/or satisfactory?

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