After the whole no-follow ‘bombshell’ of recent coupled with the fact that- lets face it- this is not the first time Google has thrown a spanner in the works, it is a welcome change that they have improved on something that has driven SEOs and webmasters round the bend for years – not knowing if your site is still being penalised by Google.
It is normally pretty obvious if your site has been penalised and by checking various things on your Webmaster Tools and checking to see if your site is complying with Webmaster Guidelines. The issue that has been a problem for years is that once these corrections have been made and a reconsideration request has been submitted we are left in limbo as to whether these changes have been enough to get your site indexed again.
Well the good news is that Google is now sending email notifications to webmasters once they have received reconsideration request. A webmaster will receive an email in days which says “We’ve processed your reconsideration request for [yoursite.com].” All you have to do is check that your site is complying with Webmaster Guidelines before submitting a reconsideration request and once you receive the email check to see if your site is back in Google’s index. If it is not then there is clearly still a problem with your site so you need to find, fix, and submit a reconsideration request once more.
For information how to check your site for problems see the post on Search Engine Land on how to do a Google re-inclusion reconsideration request.