Today Google released a video from two leaders of the Google Search Quality Web Spam Group, Racheal Searles and Brian White, giving their recommendations for creating a good reconsideration request.
Their Tips Include:
Admit any mistakes you’ve made and let Google know what you have done to fix them. They want you to realize there is actual people who read the re-inclusion request. If you don’t know what your site did to get the penalty the suggest going back and rereading the Google Guidelines which you can see here:
Direct Link in Video: 0:17
Your server timing out and/or temporarily showing bad content will not give your site a penalty. So No need for a reconsideration request. It's recommended that you wait a bit and see if things revert back to their previous ranking.
Direct Link in Video: 1:00
Duplicate content does not cause a penalty. So No need for a reconsideration request
Direct Link in Video: 1:30
Partnership with a website that violates quality guidelines can affect both your site and the partner site. Brian does state that Google realizes you do not control the other site so be sure to put that in your reconsideration request.
Direct Link in Video: 1:42
For bad links point them to the URL that shows your exhaustive attempts to clean that up.
Direct Link in Video: 2:15
Don’t try to fool or lie to them on the report. They restate that there are actual people reading the report and they have tools to review the reconsideration request. If they feel you have not fixed the problem they will disregard your request.
Direct Link to Video: 2:27
It can take some time to notice a penalty has been lifted.
You can watch the full video below: