[NightWolf]

OK, so I've been doing SEO for a client for a few months, rankings were up around page 1 and 2. Then, Dec 29, 2011 ALL rankings dropped, mostly beyond 200, and half not in top 500. Guess it's the -50 penalty.

So I went nuts, making a shiteload of changes to the site, robots.txt, using noindex/nofollow rules on categories/tags/authors etc. Continued ALN links, but nothing else really, until about a month ago, and then used mostly Wikis, Press Releases, and some social bookmarking. Kept waiting, and still...nothing.

So then, via G Webmaster Tools, file a reconsideration request, stating that there's nothing malicious going on with the site, it's updated daily, nothing sketchy going on. See below message I sent to client, which quotes G's reply...

"Hi #####,

See below email from Google, which is in your webmaster's account. My take on it, is they're not telling the full story, as it's very strange that http://www.######.com was ranking on page 1 and 2 until December 29th - where ALL keywords dropped to 200+.  And then, as of Feb 10th, ALL keywords are above 50!

And it just so happens that the message sent to your webmaster's tools account was received on...February 10, 2012 =)

"

Reconsideration request for http://www.######.com/: No manual spam actions found

February 10, 2012

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.######.com,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.######.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.
Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.
If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.
If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"

Anyhow, I'm relieved that nightmare is over, let's continue!

Regards

[WillJR]

I honestly wouldn't of submitted a site review to google.

I personally don't use google webmaster tool because I'd much rather keep google in the dark with what I am doing behind the curtain.
I don't think it's something they are not "telling you" it look just looks like an automated message to people that where not manually reviewed.

If you where manually reviewed I am sure you would of got a different message.

I just recently had a site drop from rank 3 to bounching around page two and three. This site brought me in an extra $1,500/m income. Ounce it dropped I was devastated.
I just kept the link building the same and  2~3 weeks later I am back in rank 3 making money again.

[^RankMe]

I'm not sure what you think is so mysterious here.  Looks like the site took an algorithmic penalty and not a manual penalty.

[adam]

This thread is interesting as someone else reported when they filled a reconsideration request and had ALN links in their profile, the manual webspam team pointed at these links as a problem.... But like a lot of reconsideration requests these days the reconsideration request was filed proactively, and not reactively and there wasn't a penalty notification.

Think a lot of people are filing requests which arent necessary.

[raven]

adam, on 15 February 2012 - 09:21, said:

This thread is interesting as someone else reported when they filled a reconsideration request and had ALN links in their profile, the manual webspam team pointed at these links as a problem.... But like a lot of reconsideration requests these days the reconsideration request was filed proactively, and not reactively and there wasn't a penalty notification.

Think a lot of people are filing requests which arent necessary.

are you suggesting that its not necessary to fill the reconsideration request based on the linking aspect? just want to get clarification, not confrontation lol.This due to it being algorithmic penalty in nature?

[adam]

This is the old classic of people thinking they have been penalised when they haven't, which happens sooooo much

[mbomb]

adam, on 15 February 2012 - 09:21, said:

This thread is interesting as someone else reported when they filled a reconsideration request and had ALN links in their profile, the manual webspam team pointed at these links as a problem....

Does this mean that ALN links are a bad idea?

[irishfury]

mbomb, on 22 February 2012 - 10:11, said:

Does this mean that ALN links are a bad idea?

You got to have good link diversity.  
If all you have is ALN type links it looks like spam.  If you got some press release, comments, social book mark, some tweets and aln links you should be good.