Difference between a manual spam filter and actual penalty?

[eljacko]

I have had mixed answers from many agencies in regards to what the differences are between getting a manual spam action to a penalty on your website.

I understand there are different levels but in severity how server is this from 1-10?

Site still ranks for many just a page down etc.

[aakk9999]

Manual spam action is a penalty applied manually.

You may also have a penalty by tripping up some filter (for example over optimisation penalty), and these penalties are done automatically.

Manual spam actions may expire after a certain time [webmasterworld.com...] whilst if you tripped a filter, this will not expire and to recover you would either need to do some changes your end or the site may recover if a filter threshold changes.

Also, to get rid of manual spam action, you may try to rectify the issue and send reconsideration request, whilst reconsideration request will not help you if you tripped some filter.

[Planet13]

+1 aakk9999

Very concisely worded. My response would have been three times as long and said half as much.