Google Humans Do Review Every Reconsideration Request

Over the past week or two there has been some people suggesting that Google does not review manually every single reconsideration request.

A new Google Webmaster Help thread has one such complaint but the truth is, at least from what we are told, Google employees reviews 100% of all reconsideration requests.

I have been told that directly by Googlers and Matt Cutts did a video a couple years ago on the topic. That was before Google swapped the reconsideration requests in the manual action viewer where now all reconsideration requests have to be submitted via the manual action section and thus all are reviewed by humans.

They might have some templated responses they use but humans do click on, read and paste the response.

Here is Matt's video:

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Google Secure Search Going Global, So Is Not Provided

A WebmasterWorld thread links to a story that says Google has recently begun defaulting to Google's secure, encrypted search worldwide.

Here is a statement from Niki Christoff, Google's Director of Corporate Communications:

The revelations of this past summer underscored our need to strengthen our networks. Among the many improvements we've made in recent months is to encrypt Google Search by default around the world. This builds on our work over the past few years to increase the number of our services that are encrypted by default and encourage the industry to adopt stronger security standards.

Honestly, I thought Google's secure search was default globally already based on my 93% not provided count. But I guess, it will soon be 100%.

Yes, as Google defaults all search to SSL, it will stripe out the referral query data and marketers will lose out as well. Most don't care if it goes global because most have already lost 90%+.

But we are eagerly awaiting what Google is going to announce with the upcoming not provided changes.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.