On the evening of September 28th, Google’s Garry Illyes said tonight that those who were suffering from previous Penguin penalties should begin seeing recoveries. This is what he said on Twitter:
@atmoore81 it’s happening as we speak. or tweet. it will take a few more days to finish that part
— Gary Illyes (@methode) September 28, 2016
This is only a part of the Penguin update that happened on Friday, but this “recovery” part only began the following Wednesday, according to Gary Illyes.
Keep in mind that even after the recovery, if you were hit by a penalty, you won’t be able to bounce back to where you were pre-Penguin penalty. Penguin 4 devalues link spam now, so the links that once gave people awesome rankings will not count anymore. Even though those spammy links don’t count, they also won’t give your site an extra demontion on top of not counting. Simply put, they are devalued – they won’t count as good or bad.