Thanks Marie.

Sorry, yes, by "take effect", I meant see better results in the SERPS.

I understand that I have been affected by Penguin (I had an audit carried out by Paul Macnamara, who you referred me onto.  He was great, BTW).

So I guess it's just a waiting game.  I'm crossing my fingers very tightly!

From Paul's audit, I do have a good base of links, and I am continuing to build them.  Also, for many keywords, the site actually ranked higher before any link building was ever done by the bad SEO company.  With these things in mind, I'm really, really, really hoping that my fortunes will change on the next Penguin refresh - whenever that might be!!  Will be very disappointed if not.  SUCH a frustrating thing as it feels very much out of my control.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Marie, in your experience, does it take weeks or months or most disavows to take effect?  I submitted my disavow file 3 weeks ago and nothing so far...

Hi Emma

First of all, great news that your penalty was lifted. Are things back to what they were prior to the penalty being imposed?

In terms of my website... As it's an algorithmic penalty, not a manual one, there's no reinclusion request to submit in my case.  So, the only way I can show penance is to show that some links have been manually removed - most likely I would only get a very small percentage of these removed, if any, due to the spammy nature of these sites.

I can still go through this outreach process.  But, I mainly wondered if there was any disadvantage in doing the disavow first. I am very concerned that there could be a Penguin update before I get chance to outreach then disavow.  Due to the seasonality of my market, a few weeks can make a dramatic difference to the chance of survival of the business.  The window of opportunity for sales happens in the spring and summer.

I can always do a second round of disavowing afterwards.

Thanks

Coral

Interesting video... loving Matt Cutts' T-shirt

There's no reinclusion request to be made as it's just an algorithmic penalty.  Not a manual penalty.

Your stats are interesting, and show much better success than anyone else's I've heard. 50% is amazing, but doesn't seem that representative of the general experience (from what I've read). Well done to you though.

Just to clarify, I'm not thinking that there will be a Penguin update in the next three weeks.  Rather, if there is an update and I haven't actioned it, that's things looking pretty bleak for me for the entire season. Because, by the time the next one arrives, it could be too late (as things are quiet again).

I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty.  Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic?

The reason why I was considering this was as follows:

• Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details.
• My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

(Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)