Is Manual Penalty easier to deal with than Algo Penalty?

[McMohan]

A manual action may sound scary, and in my understanding, sites that violate the most are manually penalized (Perhaps someone can validate this statement). But, compared to algorithmic penalty, isn't manual penalty easier to deal with?

1. You are sure your site is penalized, because you're told so.
2. You have a recourse to filing Reconsideration Request.
3. You are told if the penalty is lifted or not.
4. You have better control to expedite the process.

With algorithmic penalty, you are groping in the dark and with no option of Reconsideration Request, you are in for an indefinite wait. Or is there a way to expedite the process just as we can do in case of Manual Penalty?

[1script]

Yes, I think so. In my own sorry experience, dealing with the most harsh penalties (like complete bans) was most efficient and expedient (couple of months). Revoking lesser penalties took anywhere between 6 and 9 months. An algorithmic change that axed 30%+ of traffic last November is still unresolved and no possible solution have been identified yet.

Another problem is the expectation of what "dealing with" will actually lead to. If it's eventually receiving the "Manual Action Revoked" notice, then yes, it's expedient. But if you are talking in terms of improving traffic (not getting it *all* back - that is completely out of the question - the site is usually permanently scarred by the gash in normal link gathering, constructive development etc.) then nothing other than restoring indexing of the site after a complete ban brought back any traffic in any of my "dealings" with penalties in the last 2 years. In one interesting case traffic actually dropped after the "revoked" notice was received. So, be careful what you wish for ...

[McMohan]

1script, thanks for your observations. That is what I feared. Not only are you first spending time in the clean-up, but also waiting for Google to notice all the clean-up you did, adjust its index, crawl the web to notice the links removed and finally, when it feels is the right time, the penalty to be lifted. Without Reconsideration option, it will be a very long-drawn affair.

[1script]

@McMohan: regarding the cleaning process: yes, all of what you said, compounded by the fact that the supposedly bad links are normally on supposedly bad sites which may themselves be already banned or severely penalized hence no allotted crawl budget to speak of. It may take AGES for Google to re-read 100,000+ of pages of a site that only has 1000/day crawl budget (or less). In case your worst links wound up on a very bad site that got completely banned, I can tell from experience that crawling of banned sites eventually stops altogether. THEN how does Google knows you've removed your links?

This is a mess, a complete and utter mess Google has created themselves by their over-reliance on results of other people's work (i.e. properly, in good faith, linking relevant HTML pages). This was a system designed for failure, too bad the two geniuses Larry and Sergey could not see this coming. 15 years later, sitting on mountains of cash, they are still unable to tell what the page is ABOUT, they can only meekly try to get clues from that other people tell them through the easily abused links.

[Planet13]

"...compounded by the fact that the supposedly bad links are normally on supposedly bad sites which may themselves be already banned or severely penalized hence no allotted crawl budget to speak of. It may take AGES for Google to re-read 100,000+ of pages of a site that only has 1000/day crawl budget (or less)."

+1

In some cases, when there are a lot of bad links to INTERNAL pages of your site, it might be better to change the file name / URL of that page and let the old page serve a 404 / 410 header?

[seoskunk]

Yes

[JS_Harris]

Infinitely, yes. Tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it immediately. Tell me something is wrong by taking away 90% of my traffic but not giving me specifics and I am left having to guess. Sure Google may think this is a good and healthy thing anyway since it gets webmasters to improve sites but does it really improve sites? I would love to throw those resources towards content creation and visitor interaction instead of going on a Google goose hunt. Do my visitors enjoy me missing in action?

[1script]

Sure Google may think this is a good and healthy thing anyway since it gets webmasters to improve sites but does it really improve sites?

JS, Google is a publicly traded US corporation that by law has to be concerned with one thing and one thing only: making money for its shareholders (a laughable concept, I know, given that they never paid dividend despite $50Bil+ in cash). You and I can be sure of only two things: 1. They are NOT interested in helping us to improve our businesses and 2. To hell with "organizing the world's information". The only thing that became easier to find in the last year is an Amazon listing.

[Wilburforce]

does it really improve sites?

Joseph Heller is reported to have said: 'When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?"'

Some sites/pages - like correctly coded definitive texts on specific subjects - really can't be significantly improved.

In any event, I get the impression that the most common manual penalty is for unnatural links (i.e. for external rather than on-site content). Penguin extends this to algorithm-based penalties invoked without notice or any auditable offence or solution. We're not being asked to improve our sites, we're being asked to clean up internet spam for Google.