Google’s John Mueller said in a Google+ hangout this morning at the 8:09 mark that after you “recover” from a penalty, “it’s almost never going to be that we will just restore the previous state” of your rankings you had prior to the penalty.

Why, he said because the web evolves and because of that, things won’t be the same. Of course, you and I know that penalty removal does not mean you rank in the same spot you did rank before you had a penalty. Why, well, the signals that you had to rank you originally no longer are benefiting you. But John didn’t say that, I think he wanted to though.

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