Matt Cutts posted a video answering a question about Google reading reconsideration requests. In short, Google reads and responds virtually all reconsideration requests submitted by Webmasters.
Here is the video:
At one point, I thought maybe some of the replies were automated, but I was wrong. They may have templated responses that seem unhelpful, but those are not triggered automatically.
Here is the transcript:
0:00 today's question comes from prague
0:02 hi how r asks right now when webmaster sends a reconsideration requests
0:07 how many chances does it
0:08 have to really be read by real human
0:10 do you plan to make it possible for webmasters dancer when they get a result
0:14 back from google
0:15 great questions so whenever you're reconsideration request if you don't
0:19 have any manual action by the web's band came so there's no way that we could
0:23 do anything in that sense because it's algorithmic media determining where
0:27 you're writing
0:28 those are automatically closed out so those are looked at by a human being
0:32 but hundred-percent of all the other reconsideration requests are looked at
0:36 by a real person
0:38 we don't have the time to individually reply with the time of detail
0:41 uh... and so you know we do think about ways to be more scalable and so
0:45 understand it they might not be hata's as satisfying to get
0:48 yet we think you're ok or or no you still have issues
0:52 but that is a real human that is looking at that and generating the response that
0:55 you read back
0:57 now the second question was also interesting do you plan to make it
0:59 possible for web masters to sort of cancer
1:02 when they got a result
1:04 if we say for example no we still think there's issues with your site we hope
1:07 that you will take some time investigate that and seo
1:10 here something that i could do hear something away that i could make that
1:13 better after you make some more changes and try to improve things you can always
1:16 do another reconsideration requests and so that way you can put it back and from
1:21 that person and hopefully talk a little bit about the progress dot just like
1:25 immediately resubmitted and say well i think you are wrong
1:29 show some reasoning why google should reconsider them into action if we'd
1:33 already decided that it was justified before
1:36 we've actually been tryin are very experimental program where
1:39 when we see someone who's doing donna reconsideration requests more than once
1:43 well simple a small number of those and send those to other people to sort of
1:47 saying okay
1:48 bus to a deeper did hear you know maybe we need to send a little bit more info
1:52 or or or
1:53 or investigate
1:54 in a little more that more detail uh... it's just one of ways that we've just
1:58 been experimenting with actually been doing it for quite awhile to try to
2:01 figure out okay are there other ways that we can improve our process other
2:04 ways that we can communicate more so it's the kind of thing that we don't
2:07 guarantee that a few will appeal a couple times they don't get any sort of
2:13 uh... morgue
2:14 detailed of an answer book there are people reading all of those
2:17 reconsideration requests the one thing i would say is just because you get back a
2:22 reply that says no we still think there's issues dot just meeting the
2:25 appeal again did you do you want to try to identify the issues and if it looks
2:29 like you're not doing that then
2:31 after while we start to think well
2:33 this guy's hard-headed he he doesn't you know if he hasn't been making any
2:37 changes at all to respond to the the the sorts of stuff that we think still has
2:42 problems with the site
2:43 and at that point you know it's not as
2:45 productive just keep having that conversation but we do absolutely try to
2:50 think about how can we have a lot of
2:52 uh... response how can we not do better and a real person does look at those
2:56 reconsideration requests and we have been experimenting with different ways
2:59 to try to make the process even better
Forum discussion at Google+.
