Manual Hidden Text Penalty from Google

[hughie]

Hi There

I client i inherited has been hidding text behind their menu bar for years, i've pointed out my misgivings on this for a long while but they were unwilling to change due to worry about rankings and a messy page.

They warmed to a change on my last atempt but it got lost in other work and thus the sites been stung from google with a penalty that was preceeded by an email from google via webmastertools.

They basically asked the client to remove the hidden text and submit a reinclusion request, which they've done.

Questions are:

1- has anyone got experience of this, it seems very similar to BMW's penalty last year?

2- How long is said site typically excluded for, again BMW's 4 days seems VERY optimistic?

3- do rankings return as before?

And please hold off on the "told you so's" because it's blindingly obvious this could have been easily avoided if said client took my advice from day 1....

[GF_Diablos]

I saw a turn around time of 1 month when a client came to me after content spamming. I submitted re-inclusion, 3 weeks and a bit later the site came back in at page 4 (was 1st for a few moderate retail terms). Slowly worked back up to first page (around an extra month). I left the client when they were 5th and wouldn't go up any more, suspect Google wouldn't let them but their site wasn't that great and they didn't want to pay for a redesign.

[hughie]

Hi GF_Diablos

did you have to put in a lot of extra work (link building an such) to work them back to where they were, or was it a case of removing the spam and just waiting?

thanks
hughie