A while back, we polled our audience asking if they prefer manual or algorithmic penalties by Google – that is, if you had to pick one or the other.

Imagine Matt Cutts coming over to you and saying, you’re a bad boy. You deserve a penalty but I’ll let you pick, you can have an algorithmic demotion or a manual action. Which would you pick?

I explain in detail the different between the two over here and the response was that 65% prefer a manual action, whereas 35% said they prefer an algorithmic demotion.

We had over 300 responses to the thread. Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results.

Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.

Note: I am offline today and this post was pre-scheduled to be automatically posted. So if I am delayed in responding to issues or comments, I apologize in advance.