Manual penalties can be appealed via the reconsiderations process. If a webmaster is unable to file a reconsideration request, this usually means that there is no manual penalty on the site.
As I mentioned above, manual penalties can be hidden. I know this because there was no indication from any tool that there was a penalty against my site, and because Matt Cutts claimed that there was no manual penalty against my site, and yet a Google employee verified the penalty internally.
If you're a Google employee, I'd love to discuss this with you! My email address is waltergr@gmail.com .
I'm a little unclear on that. Matt specifically mentioned two active penalties.
Matt said that there was an automated penalty due to advertising on my site. Following this, I removed all advertising from the site. My site's ranking did not change, nor did traffic referred by Google searches. Why is that? If there's nothing I need to do for the site, why have those metrics not changed?
Matt also said that there was an automated Panda penalty against my site. Following this, I removed all citations from the site. My site's ranking did not change, nor did traffic referred by Google searches. Same questions as above: Why is that? If there's nothing I need to do for the site, why have those metrics not changed?
What did the prior manual penalty against my site that Matt mentioned have to do with Web Build Pages / Jim Boykin? I had never even heard of them. What specifically was that manual penalty? I have seen no evidence in ranking and in traffic referred by Google searches to ever indicate that this penalty existed. Furthermore, I was never informed by Google via any mechanism that there was a manual penalty against my site. Why is that?
Have Google employees ever been able to apply demotions, penalties, or any mechanism whatsoever to drop a website's positions in Google SERPs, in a way that the website owner is never made aware of it?
Has that ever been done to my site, The Online Slang Dictionary?
> Have Google employees ever been able to apply demotions, penalties, or any mechanism whatsoever to drop a website's positions in Google SERPs, in a way that the website owner is never made aware of it?
should have read, in part,
> Have Google employees ever been able to manually apply...
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