Testing a Google Penalty - how long to wait?

[JerryRB]

Certain url's on my site are in a Google penalty. The reasons are unclear, so I would like to set up some tests.

Fortunately all the afflicted url's seem to be suffering from the same penalty so I would like to a/b test different tweaks and changes (editing navigation, content, inbound links, etc).

My question is how long after a change is made should I wait to assume the test succeeded or failed?

[minnapple]

Site wide internal link changes can take a few weeks to kick in, single on page stuff should happen days after a bot visit. Inbounds final effects can vary widely but somewhat equals: link found and target page recached + 15 days.

[Reilly]

to heavy KeywordDensity more than 1 year to come back - that was 2 years ago

[edited by: Reilly at 10:38 am (utc) on Feb. 19, 2008]

[JerryRB]

So are penalties ever put on a timer - 30 days, 90 days, etc? Meaning that no matter what you do to solve the problem, unless you know when the penalty expires there's really no point in testing.

[edited by: JerryRB at 9:21 pm (utc) on Feb. 19, 2008]

[Lorel]

All Black Hats would like to know when the penalty lifts also :)

[tedster]

yes, some penalties can lift on a timer - and also by degrees as more time goes by. Sort of like being on parole ;)

[minnapple]

I recieved some bad advice about four years ago and was stupid enough to follow it.

One of my older sites received a google penality for "cough" log spamming..

I was busted when I applied to Adsense.

The site is now well [ unsolicited ] linked from social networks, and some high level blogs.

The site is still in the pooper and I really don't expect to see it ever come back in google search.
Some old versions of the homepage exist in various forms in google search, without a description and will rank on page one for relatively competitive terms, otherwise it is awol.

I could do a reinclusion, but it gets enough profitable traffic without google search, so I am not going to bother.

So some penalities are never removed unless you ask for forgiveness.

Also, the penality goes beyond the domain name, it extends to the content.