Do panda/penguin algorithm updates hit websites or just webpages ?

[Gavo]

If I have a website that been affected by the panda/penguin update, do bad links affect the entire site or just the page the bad link(s) are linked to?

If it is the latter and penguin/panda actually affect webpages, not websites (as is the common reference/conception), then wouldn't simply creating a new URL, targeting this new URL, shifting meta-tags and restarting link-building efforts again (this time using the right quality strategies) be a really common-sense approach instead of the tediousness of the disavow approach that so many go down?

[FedeEinhorn]

Panda does not affect links, penguin does.

Panda is a "quality content" related update.

Penguin penalizes both pages and/or entire domains, even to the point of completely removing the from the index.

Under your Google Webmaster Tools, "Manual Actions" you can see the type of penalty the site has (if any) and what it is impacting.

"Sitewide" means that the entire site got the hit, while "Partial Matches" means some parts or some links.

Anyhow, if you have a manual penalty, you won't recover by just creating new pages. Although penalties expire, you cannot know which ones were hit.

You have to consider if the Website is worth saving or you can just start again fresh. If you have a Website 3 years old or more, and generating income, with a client base, then you probably start working on saving it. If your Website was new, not real client base or value, you rather start fresh.

Don't make the same mistakes again!

[Gavo]

Thanks Federico,

If a site has been affected with a "Partial Matches" hit, then can the simple shifting of targeted webpage solve the problem (in effectively allowing that targeted page to start again, without having to worry about disavow)?

[FedeEinhorn]

Do you have the penalty in available in your Google WT? What exactly does it say?

Most penguin penalties I've seen are partial matched and affecting only some incoming links. Removing pages won't help as you don't know which ones are affected.

Doing a link cleanup by going link after link asking for removal and then requesting a reconsideration may remove the penalty (in conjunction with the disavow file), but there's been several polls online and over 80% of the people who did this and got their penalty removed didn't see their rankings back. This is obviously true, as probably those manipulative links were the ones causing your high rankings and now gone you need to get some REAL, EARNED links to gain positions.

Truth be told, no one can tell what will happen, and you can only try.

The ultimate question always become: Is it really worth it? Or do I just start fresh (new Website, unrelated to the old one)?