Guilty No Matter What?

One of the features of Google's Sitemap tool that has been praised by those in the industry is that reinclusion request. That's a handy feature for webmasters that have inadvertently violated Google's guidelines and found themselves on the invisible end of the search results. That said, it's also a feature that has been suggested for innocent sites that have found themselves swept under the rug in a new algorithm after a Google update.

With that in mind, it's a little bit...well...weird to read Amit Patel's note pointing out that a reinclusion request actually cannot be sent unless the webmaster first admits to "violating Google's quality guidelines." It doesn't matter if you have a site that didn't violate guidelines, you still need to check the box.

As Patel puts it:

So basically – under this system if a site has been dropped from the index, the owner is forced to admit wrong doing (even if they didn’t) and at the same time clear Google of any wrong doing (even if they did).

It is programmed into the system that if Google can never make mistakes. There can’t be a situation in which Google dropped a site from the index because of their own fault. They are always above and beyond any doubt...

While I understand the thinking at Google in putting this in place...it just seems so...well, pompous of them. It brings to mind the piteous orphans begging for a scrap from the rich landowner in some old Charles Dickens inspired film on AMC. It's one thing to encourage webmasters to fess up to any techniques that may have caught them in a filter, but it's a whole other thing to expect everyone to admit guilt, just because you feel like it.