Working on a reconsideration request for a manual penalty in Google.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  David Sabot: Working on a reconsideration request for a manual penalty in Google.  ;We are using RMOOV.com to help us manage our outreach to webmasters to ask for link removals.  ;RMOOV does a nice job of creating a excel spreadsheet with all documentation.  ;I plan to convert this spreadsheet into a Google Document and share it with my reconsideration request.
  
  My question lies in the actual screenshots of contact forms we have submitted and actual email source codes for all emails we submitted.  ;Here RMOOV stores these on their own domain, like ;
  
  http://www.rmoov.com/notes/e93e13331a07/1398982/notes.txt
  
  So for each email we send they create a separate entry.  ;I was under the impression that Google wouldn't click on a link that wasn't within their domain, like a Google Doc.  ;Do I actually have to copy all of these .txt documents and images back into Google Docs or will they link to RMOOV?
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  Jeremy Estes: You dont have to do any of that stuff.. ive gotten 5 manual penalties removed in the last 6 months, and the only "proof" I've sent is a mail merge google doc spreadsheet.
  
  Just get rid of spam in disavow, explain your new company policy for seo, and send a link to google doc.
• 
  David Sabot: Would you mind sharing your mail merge google doc or some derivative thereof?
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  Jeremy Estes: If you do a search for mail merge google doc spreadsheet, there are a couple of tutorials on how to do it.
  
  I just use link from, link to and email address
• 
  Shawn Cohen: Check this mail merge option out, it's the one we've been using: http://www.labnol.org/software/mail-merge-with-gmail/13289/
• 
  Jeremy Estes: Fancyyyy
  
  edit: I'm convinced Google doesn't care too much about this. my last revoke had under 50 rows in google doc mail merge sheet, and almost 50k links disavowed.
• 
  David Harry: lol to be perfectly honest, this stuff is my bread and butter (recovery work) and I haven't used a spreadsheet in ages. And always get 'em out. Short and sweet, tell them what I got removed. Tell them how sorry we are. Tell them SEO team is now gone (which indeed is usually true) and then disavow the rest. Dats it. ;
• 
  Frank Ludriks: The whole point of a Google Manual Penalty is fourfold:
  
  *Get you to understand fully what an unnatural link is, and what link schemes are;
  *To prevent you from ever placing unnatural links again;
  *To help remove webspam from Google's index; and
  *To help you focus on improving your website so that you may rank higher (after you have worked on removing bad links).
  
  There is an element of punishment in the penalty, but the major purpose is education. ;
  
  You need to ensure that you put in your reconsideration request that
  
  *You admit you have done wrong
  *You have made a major effort to clean up your links (and provide Google with a full explanation of everything you've done)
  *You have seen the error of your ways and will never build unnatural links ever again
  
  And don't forget, be polite! It's a human reading your request who has probably had a gutful of abuse :-)
• 
  Jim Munro: I've not seen this expressed anywhere else, +Frank Ludriks ;Is there a link you can send me to? :)
• 
  Frank Ludriks: +Jim Munro This is my experience having studied dozens of RRs both successful and unsuccessful. If you watch the videos +John Mueller has posted it becomes even clearer. Google wants to educate webmasters, and has always done so. A manual penalty is applied to those who won't listen :-)
• 
  Dumb SEO Questions: I'm momentarily removing you from this community, +Frank Ludriks. If you think I am wrong then please contact me.
  
  If you want to post as a Google employee, a Top Contributor or even just as an interested bystander, that's fine, you are more than welcome,  ;_as long as you identify yourself as such so that readers can form their own opinion_ .  ;I do not want to see this community used as a vehicle for propaganda.
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 02:21:59 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/working_on_a_reconsideration_request_for_a_manual_penalty_in_google +David Sabot
  
  The cuetimes listed on this page are functional while the live broadcast continues and also once Youtube has finished processing the public broadcast. Processing time varies between 6-24 hours. During this period the clip is viewable in full but the cuetimes cannot be relied on.
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  Frank Ludriks: +Jim Munro Hi Jim, I'm quite flattered that you would think I'm a Google employee, a TC or even extremely knowledgeable :-)
  
  I'm actually one of those idiots who got a manual penalty from Google because of all the lazy "SEO" I did.
  
  Now I need to learn how to rank without stupid tricks, so I've been quite active lately in the Webmaster forums and been keenly watching Hangout and Office Hours videos as well as partaking in great communities such as this.
  
  If you want to ban me, no problem. I'm a big boy, I'll move on :-)
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  Jim Munro: Thanks Frank. I make mistakes all the time so it's not hard to apologise. I am used to it. :)