How long does it take to have your site in Google's index?

How can I get Google to read my site's reconsideration request?

• I have a site that's got two manual penalties in Google Webmaster Tools: one for "pure spam" and one for "user-generated spam" (no link penalties currently - this is just for on-site stuff). In the example URLs for the "pure spam" penalty, every single URL listed is in the site's /blogs/ directory. That entire directory and every URL in it has been giving a 410 response code for more than a year. I have also done a site: search to confirm that no URLs in this directory are remaining in Google's index. I've submitted two reconsideration requests asking that the "pure spam" penalty be lifted, explaining that I've 410ed the entire directory in an effort to eliminate entirely all the spam on the site. The first reconsideration request was on 6 October 2013 and eventually I got this message back on 24 October 2013: We received a reconsideration request from a site owner for (site). We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our quality guidelines, and revoke or adjust manual spam actions applied to the site if appropriate. You can use the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools to view actions currently applied to your site. If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out our Help Center to identify and fix potential causes of the problem. This led me to believe that nobody at Google actually read my reconsideration request and checked to verify that I had cleaned up the site. So I followed up with a new reconsideration request on 18 November 2013. Sure enough, on 12 December 2013 I received this message again from Google: We received a reconsideration request from a site owner for (site). We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our quality guidelines, and revoke or adjust manual spam actions applied to the site if appropriate. You can use the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools to view actions currently applied to your site. If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out our Help Center to identify and fix potential causes of the problem. Can anybody tell me what it will take to get someone at Google to read my reconsideration request instead of just waiting a few weeks and then sending me boilerplate autoreplies? In particular, speaking just about the "pure spam" penalty, I'd like one of two things to happen: either give me a list of example URLs that are affected that aren't returning a 410 status code, or lift the penalty. ps. Although I'm posting here anonymously, I'd be happy to share the site's domain and the full text of both reconsideration requests with anyone at Google or with anyone else who can help.

• Answer:

  Seeing the site would help a lot. If you've checked the manual actions page and the actions still exist, then they have reviewed your page and determined it is still spam. When a manual action occurs it basically means the algorithm has flagged you for review and someone went through and decided you were in violation. Google did review your site with a real person. So the reply is notifying you that a REAL person has checked your site. Manual actions are violations the algorithm can't determine. Therefore all reviews of such actions are done by people not algorithms. Now even though you destroyed what they first considered spam, they have most likely determined you're probable to just create more spam, or that you have already created new pages with low content value. So get someone not affiliated with the website or you to review your website. Ask them questions: 1. What did you find useful/useless. These are the things you want to make more of/ get rid of. 2. What could we make better? These will make the UX better. 3. What did you HATE? Use this feedback to review your site. Next, you can use a web crawler to see what pages crawlers are finding. Screaming Frog is a decent one. Get rid of any links to pages within the /blog directory. (If they still exist this is most likely your issue.) Make sure you have someone unaffiliated with the site look over it. Things you don't consider spam, may be spam like. When you go to request another review, make sure you've done EVERYTHING you can think of. Sending tons of requests will make you less likely to ever get the actions revoked.