Does changing URL helps after being recovered from Manual Spam?

[TheRedPenOfDoom]

I have noticed that a couple of my online competitors who lost their positions (I'm assuming because of some Google update and most probably the manual spam) have changed their pages' url and is ranking again.

They have change nothing on the page, except the URL, and probably they have dropped some bad links.

I have also noticed that Google is giving preferences to new pages & domains over older domains especially those who lost their previous position in SERPS.

Is it possible that the upcoming Penguin update would reset this trend?

[aristotle]

Is it possible that the upcoming Penguin update would reset this trend?

Well the "upcoming" Penguin update might be able to correct some of the errors of the last Penguin update, but that was more than a year ago. Any rankings changes that happened since then weren't caused by Penguin.

[JD_Toims]

Is it possible that the upcoming Penguin update would reset this trend?

We can only hope.

[TheRedPenOfDoom]

Yes, truly so.

However I'm still wondering if changing urls causes regaining rankings faster than the old urls who have recovered from the manual spam action penalty.

[lucy24]

Are they redirecting from old URL to new? Or did they simply dump the old URLs and plop the identical content onto brand-new URLs?

[Planet13]

However I'm still wondering if changing urls causes regaining rankings faster than the old urls who have recovered from the manual spam action penalty.

When you say changing their URLs, are they on the SAME domain name? Or a new domain name?

Is it just something like:

www.sameolddomain.com/old_page.html

changed to

www.sameolddomain.com/new_page.html

[TheRedPenOfDoom]

they moved their pages inside a directory on the old domain. something like:

www.sameolddomain.com/old_page.html

changed to

www.sameolddomain.com/in/old_page.html

[lucy24]

Question stands. Are they redirecting, so search engines know it's the same content at a new URL? Or are they starting from scratch? If you don't know, you can easily check by simply requesting a few URLs in the old form.

[Planet13]

Exactly, Lucy24:

Do they serve up 404 or 410 pages when the old URLs are requested?

Or are they 301 redirecting (or 302 redirecting) to the new URLs?