Can Google penalize your site without sending you a Manual Spam Action?

[DavidC.]

I had a massive drop in traffic in Mid 2013, and a slow reduction since then. It has sort of leveled off now, but it's not exactly climbing

I've never received a manual spam action.

The answer to my question seems pretty obvious, now that I write it out... but have you heard of anyone getting penalized, without specifically receiving a warning?

Thanks!

[RyanPurkey]

Hi David. Yes, lots of penalties (in the sense of algorithm changes) cause sites to change in rankings as do changes in the competitive landscape, changes in search volumes, changes in link profiles, and so on. During mid 2013, many Panda updates came across (https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change#2013) and could have been the cause, especially if your site was / is struggling to maintain high quality content.  Take a look at the timeline though and your ongoing history and you'll likely see a fairly distinct pattern emerge. Typically a manual spam action causes a near complete removal from the index. Cheers!

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Absolutely, I'd say even most sites that receive a penalty probably don't receive an email or warning on time to make sure they can prevent on what's going to happen. These days it's getting better with Google sending different alerts for link issues or their site being down but in the past they barely send any emails.