

Google reject a Reconsideration Request for a non-English language site. - Roedou
http://www.iloveseo.net/google-wft-an-absurd-story/

======
Matt_Cutts
The explanation for this is actually quite straightforward. Google fights spam
in 40 different languages and we absolutely take reconsideration requests in
many different languages, including Italian, French, German, etc. We've also
improved our reconsideration requests in the last few months to tell
webmasters whether the requests have been granted or whether the website still
has issues in our opinion.

People have told us that they'd like to have additional feedback though--not
just a "yes/no" type of answer. So we've been experimenting with giving more
in-depth answers. I discussed the experiment in this video we published a
couple weeks ago: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rsWc78dits#t=1m36s> (watch
from 1:36 to 1:56 or so).

Now you know enough to understand what happened in this case. This person,
after violating our quality guidelines, had done multiple reconsideration
requests. His English-language reconsideration request was selected to get a
more personalized response, but then when the Googler started to investigate
the site, the actual site was in Italian. That's what triggered the "this
language is not supported" message because the person handling the case was
expecting an English-language site based on the English-language
reconsideration request.

What you need to know:

\- we absolutely do handle reconsideration requests in lots of different
languages, including Italian.

\- we've also been experimenting with giving more in-depth answers to
webmasters. The mismatch between the language of the reconsideration request
and the language of the website caused this message to get sent, but

\- we'll still send this site more in-depth advice. Based on the website's
spammy linkbuilding techniques mentioned in the blog post, it sounds like they
could use the extra guidance anyway.

~~~
gfiorelli1
Thanks for the answer, and thanks for clarifying he situation and the reason
of the answers. Maybe adding a line saying: "You did a request for an italian
site, so we kindly ask you to refer to the Italian reconsideration request
procedure in Italian". Remember he is not a professional SEO, and these kind
of "subtleties" maybe are not understood so fast, especially when you see your
previous reconsiderations not answered.

Said that, as I was saying in the post, my friend is aware that the site have
problems and I know he is working on solving them. So, let's hope he will
adjust those issues in order to have his site graced, and that the strategy
based on content marketing will be implemented.

Ciao and thanks again for the clarification

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gfiorelli1
Hi, the purpose of my post was not to "justify" what my friend did. I, and he
first, am very aware that he did things that were not allowed by the Google
Guidelines or very low quality link building. Remember also that he is not an
SEO and that he was simply following what "all the the world" was doing,
especially in his niche. No, my purpose was to underline the absurd of the
reply Google sent to his reconsideration request. Absurd because it says
something like: "Ok, we have penalized your site, and we thank you for your
reconsideration request. What a pity that we don't understand a heck of
italian, so we cannot verify what your are saying us in english about it".
So... Google penalizes a italian site (but maybe happened also to french or
polish or other not english ones), but don't process reconsideration requests
because that site is in Italian. As I say in my post, that leads to other
questions. For instance: if a site is penalized, but the search quality team
does not have "italian" support, those penalizations sound as if they were
simply algorithmic. Or, if the site is flagged by italian quality raters (I'm
sure they exist), how Google can then penalize a site just based on an human
judgement if it cannot after verify the reasons of that penalization have been
corrected because they don't support italian? Absurd.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Gianluca, we absolutely do support reconsideration requests in Italian. See my
explanation elsewhere on the page if you want more details.

Would you mind adding an update to the top of your blog post or otherwise
correcting your blog post? I'd like to debunk the misconception that Google
doesn't take reconsideration requests in Italian, because that's just not
true. It looks like most of your blog post has been written on the assumption
that we don't respond to reconsideration requests written in Italian, and
that's simply not true.

~~~
benatkin
So english speaking folks working on behalf of a non-english speaking site
have to communicate in the language of the non-english speaking site? How very
quaint.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
No. If you have an Italian site that spammed, you can do a reconsideration
request in either Italian or in English. We'll process either language.

What I tried to explain in my other comment is that we have also been trying
an experiment in giving more in-depth info to site owners. That experiment is
currently English-only. Despite that fact, we'll still send a more in-depth
reply in Italian to this website that was violating our quality guidelines.

~~~
benatkin
At what point does it become to difficult to offer feedback? Might some
English copy be hard to understand if it contained software, medical, or legal
jargon? Why not just offer feedback that's consistent with the Google employee
or contractor's understanding of the site, and say so in the response?

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pervycreeper
It would be easier to make that case if that site owner had had "clean hands",
so to speak. It seems you are faulting Google for enforcing its own rules.

~~~
chc
I don't know how you'd get that from the article. He's very explicit that if
Google turned the guy down because they thought he was sleazy, he thinks it
would have been reasonable if inaccurate. The specific complaint is that
Google has a process to get a second chance but completely excludes sites that
are primarily in Italian.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
You're very close. The blog post claimed that Google doesn't allow
reconsideration requests in Italian, but the blog post was mistaken. We do
allow reconsideration requests in Italian, as well as for Italian sites.

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nowarninglabel
"He said he was aware of the violations"

So, your friend willfully and knowingly violated the guidelines?

~~~
Roedou
I'm not the author, so I don't know any further details of this situation, but
as I understand it:

The Reconsideration Request is _explicitly_ for use by people who knowingly
broke Webmaster Guidelines or (as in this case) who used the same (albeit
spammy) techniques that loads of other people were involved with and then
later realized that these were outside the guidelines.

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jfaucett
How can one of the most globalized companies and one behind google translate
not have support in your language? The point here isn't about violating some
guideline its in the email that google somehow has no support for any italian
language websites.

This is embarrasing for them, you think that a company as large as google and
with this kind of money
(<http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG+Key+Statistics>) and one that's primary
deals is search, social networking i.e. communication would have better
communication channels, especially with end users.

I've known people to whom google owed ad money and simply didn't pay, google
made it so hard to contact anyone that collecting was basically impossible.
For adwords, a couple months ago a collegue asked to talk to a reps boss and
she said that was impossible that only per written request would they be able
to do that. But then this was from Germany (in English) and as far as I know
google's only european support is Ireland/English based. It seems kind of odd
really if you ask me and out of sync with the high quality of their products,
or maybe this has only been my very limited bystander view of google?

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georgeorwell
"We knew enough Italian to punish you, but now that you've redeemed yourself,
and written us ever so nicely in English to tell us about it, we don't know
enough Italian to unpunish you." Let me count the ways I love thee,
unregulated internet.

