Hi, I'm Mariya from the Google Search Quality team
and I'd like to talk to you about reconsideration requests.
In this video, we will go over when and how to submit a reconsideration request for your site.
Let's take our webmaster Bergy here as an example.
Bergy is a dedicated webmaster who spends a lot of time working on his ancient Roman politics blog.
Let's call it "example.com."
One day, he notices that his site is no longer appearing in the Google search results.
Let's watch as Bergy tries to find out whether he needs to submit a reconsideration request.
First, he needs to check whether his site's disappearance from the index may be caused by access issues.
You can do that too, by logging in to your Webmaster Tools account.
On the Overview page, you will be able to see when was the last time
Googlebot successfully accessed the homepage of your site.
Here you can also check whether there are any crawling errors.
For example, if your server was busy or unavailable when we tried to access your site,
you would get an "Unreachable URLs" error message.
Alternatively, there might be URLs in your site blocked by your robots.txt file.
You can see this in "URLs restricted by robots.txt."
If these URLs are not what you expected, you can go to "Tools" and select "Analyze robots.txt."
Here you can make sure that your robots.txt file is properly formatted,
and only blocking the parts of your site which you don't want Google do crawl.
If Google has no problem accessing your site, check to see if there is a message waiting for you
in the Message Center of your Webmaster Tools account.
This is the place Google uses to communicate important information to you regarding your Webmaster Tools account
and the sites that you manage.
If we see that there is something wrong with your site, we send you a message there detailing some issues
you need to fix to bring your site into compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines.
Bergy logs in to his Webmaster Tools account and checks for new messages, but he doesn't find any.
If you don't see a message in the Message Center,
check to see if your website is or has been at some point in violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
You can find them in our Help Center
under the topic "Creating a Google-friendly site" of the section "My site and Google."
If you're not sure why Google isn't including your site, a great place to look for help is our
Google Webmaster Help group.
There, you will find many friendly and knowledgeable webmasters and Googlers
who would be happy to look at your site and give suggestions on what you might need to fix.
You can find links to both the Help Center and the Webmaster Help group at google.com/webmasters.
To get to the bottom of why his site has disappeared from the index,
Bergy opens the Webmaster Guidelines and starts reading.
In the quality guidelines, we specifically recommend avoiding hidden text.
He remembers that at one point he hired his friend Wysz, who claimed he knew something about web design,
to help his site rank better in Google.
Bergy examines his site more carefully, and discovers blocks of hidden text in the footers of all his pages.
If your site is in violation of the Webmaster Guidelines,
and you think this might have affected the way your site is viewed by Google,
now would be a good time to submit a reconsideration request.
But before you do that, make changes to your site so that it falls within the Webmaster Guidelines.
Bergy removed all hidden text from his pages.
Now you can go ahead and submit a request for reconsideration.
Log in to your Webmaster Tools account.
Under "Tools," click on "Request reconsideration" and follow the steps.
Make sure to explain what you think was wrong with your site, and what steps you have taken to fix it.
Once you have submitted your request, you will receive a message from us in the Message Center,
confirming that we have received it.
We will then review your site for compliance with the Webmaster Guidelines.
So that's an overview of how and when to submit a reconsideration request.
Thanks for watching, and good luck with webmastering!