What Does Penguin Look Like Long Term in Analytics?

[DragonSearch]

Happy New Year Moz'ers!

Our agency has recently had  a number of new clients who were hit by the Penguin updates. These sites came to us over the last two months so they've been dealing with Penguin for months.

Looking at Google Analytics for each client, I'm seeing a lot of the same patterns - mostly a large first drop in traffic after the update and then a long, steady decline in organic traffic over the months that follow. I have seasonal factors for traffic dips for each client but I'm curious as to what other Moz'ers are finding long term.

Do you see a large traffic drop followed by a sustained plateau?

Do you see a large traffic drop followed by a long, slow decrease over the weeks or months that follow?

Do you see something else?

Thanks!

<jason @sonray=""></jason>

[kadesmith]

As far as what penguin looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37509645@N04/3661744750/

Personally I see a large traffic drop followed by a long, slow decrease or a large traffic drop followed by an increase in traffic.

The reason I see this is because it seems that when it comes to SEO, it's kind of like life.  You cannot site idle.  You're either moving forward or backward.  If the site owner doesn't care about the site, then the slow long drop will occur.  If they care about the site, they will do everything possible to get the site back up and ranking well.