The other day I covered the spammy structured markup manual action and asked does it result in a ranking decline. I didn’t think so, but the community wanted a solid answer from Google.

I had the opportunity to ask John that question yesterday in a Google+ hangout at the 7:12 mark into the video.

I asked, when you get a spammy structured markup manual action, does it downgrade the ranking of the web site or just remove the rich snippets?

John answered, it only impacts the rich snippets. He said:

Here is the video at the start time embedded:

Forum discussion at Google+.