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This is a good question. I think "spammy" needs to be defined since sites like ours, up for many years, have links in numerous places that cannot be "fixed" because at the time there was no such thing s "nofollow" and the like. To punish for old links would seem harsh although it might be done. Our problem is that we're listed on long pages of "link resources" that many are saying is spam and penalty but this is what was done in the 90s and 2000s by people wanting to put up useful websites. Here are a few I saw on possibly relevant articles that appear knowledgeable:

• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2271305/Google-Penguin-2.0-Casualties-Why-Sites-Got-Hit
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-penguin-beginning-to-flex-its-muscles/63416/

I find Barry's articles very helpful and ostensibly honest: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-upcoming-penguin-panda-link-networks-updates-151273

To begin, it's difficult for anyone to tell you what the problem is with your site without providing your site. It's a horrible feeling (I know) but that will give you the best answers, unless you prefer to pay for that privacy by hiring an SEO consultant to manage the issue. You may want to post some of the links here if you don't want to post your site and see what the group says. Regarding blogrolls - another issue that affects the 2000s and it's crazy for Google to think we can "clean" that which never really needed cleaning and only the large companies with staff will survive. Hopefully there will be clarity. Best of luck.

PS - If it makes you feel any better, your traffic drops are small in comparison to some others.

_Unfortunately, you got hit with an algorithm update and not a manual penalty.  A reconsideration request does not do anything for an algorithm update.  The good news is that there are things that you can do, the bad news is that it might take a considerable amount of time to get your rankings back.  Considering that your penalty is based on spammy links, you will need to review your back links and start requesting those links to be removed or disavowing links.  This process (depending on your link count) can take just between forever and an eternity.   _

Additionally, I see a ton of links from forums and directories.  You definitely got slapped.

Mike - I appreciate your reply and I've taken a good look at the OP's website. I want to respond to your post but add something first. The OP's website looks nice and is clean. While it does have many good case studies, the site has only 450 or so pages indexed and most of them with less than 200 words. This is very "thin" as most professional sites are - but his is on the very high end of thin. My suggestion - write a complete case study, not 2-4 sentences per page. Make it at least 2-3 quality paragraphs.

As compared to other similar sites that have a blog and generate regular content, I'd say that his penalty is probably more due to the algorithm issue you mention and the differences in the amount of text-based content is more profound. So my other suggestion would be for him to start a blog, make periodic posts concerning new projects, what they see are current trends, etc. - anything. Just show some activity once weekly at a minimum and he should see some improvements.

The backlinks issue -- I don't know if it's possible to conclude absolutely that the OP was hit due to links from forums and directories. If this is the case, than many websites like mine who have links from those places back when it was the way the Internet functioned might as well just shut down. (My forum - which is darn large - is here: http://oz.vc/2 -- it went down to a PR zero. ) This was no link building campaign - we organically collected these links during a time when this happened, e.g. the 90s and the 2000s. Much of the "junk" people have told me about our backlinks concerns dated pages from people who created long list of link resources. Many of them include competitors, who appear unpenalized (we have received no warnings.) If you could provide a source that states that Google will now punish every site that has these links from forums and directories, I think we'd all appreciate it. (And as you put it, unfortunately I might be better off putting together a resume than trying to fix what should be non-problems of a site I carefully crafted with over a decade of effort. Hoping Google isn't doing this and we're just being somewhat overly concerned.)

I'll be honest. I run a legal site and it is large and one of the oldest online. Despite the fact that it would be an incredible shame for it to disappear and not be updated thanks to the miserable way Panda and Penguin are dealing with it, I don't think Google cares about this issue that concerns a minority of sites and that there is no avenue for us to practically do anything. Nor do I think people will revolt, despite the fact they like me and our honest and very helpful site a whole lot. This is because most will get something similar elsewhere, say "oh, that's really a shame what Google is doing to them" if they even realize what's going on (and they don't except a few people here) and go on their way.

Our junk competitors have caught up with us and surpassed us in some respects solely because we've been dealing with Google issues that should not exist since Panda 2.2. All the advice made no difference and still we're dealing with people saying what it "might" be but nobody sees any huge issue that would take down our site. It's incredibly painful but Google collects Adsense revenue whether it's us or someone else. Until they get hit in the pocket or someone else takes them on in the search engine business, you're better off focusing on fixing the problem - if it's at all possible - or just accepting that life isn't fair, this completely sucks and you'll have to find something else to do. How bad can it get? 18 years after our first true "website" Google has given all of our content a page rank of zero - yes zero. This has gone on for weeks. We'd get better results scraping our own content!

Thanks guys, I thought those 3 links were nofollowed. I'm getting rid of our_ one singe page_ that gives credit to the three companies that help us that have a total of three outbound hyperlinks. It's absolutely insane to even think this is the problem among 100,000+ pages of unique content, carefully moderated and created over 15 years. This is why Google owes us a full and complete explanation for the manual penalty, which appears to have lasted for a very long time.

If this is considered problematic, Google might as well penalize 99.99% of websites, including moz.com - all dofollow, lol!!!

http://moz.com/community/recommended

It would appear this "manual action" against our site is an error that has never been corrected automatically and plagued us for a long, long time. I'll await to hear what Google says if they eventually get around to reconsidering our site. Thank you guys for scouring this large site in all directions and confirming what I've found and now making the argument airtight.