Google Penalty Expiration

Google: Don't Wait For Your Punishment To Expire

John Mueller powerfully urged that those who strike with a manual penalty should not wait for the penalty to expire. Rather, they should work to settle why they have been punished in the first spot and then submit an afterthought request.

This recommendation drives from the Google Webmaster Help thread that had the same subject of directories appointing link abolish fees.

Various people know, manual punishments expire over a certain period of time. So do nothing and wait might seem like an alternative but is it?

Perhaps, it takes six or more months for the punishment to expire. So expecting six months is frequently not an option for most online business.

After the punishment expires, it doesn’t mean you won’t be punished again. This site sells links and that is a manual penalty. The sanction expires every now and then and soon after the site is penalized again. Don't do what I did.

Here is what John from Google had to say:

If your site receives a notification of web-spam or manual action in Webmaster Tools, then that will be due to a web-spam review and manual action that has been taken. While manual actions will expire at some point, I would strongly not recommend sweeping them under the carpet and hoping that they go away on their own -- at least if you're interested in having your site be optimally represented in our search outcomes. Even when a manual action expires (which might take quite some time), if the reason for the original manual action is still relevant, it's always possible that the manual action is returned later on. In my opinion, if you're aware of issues that are negatively affecting your site's performance in search, and if its performance there is crucial to you, then resolving those issues is often a good use of time.