Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for your responses so far guys.  Just to clarify, there has not be a manual penalty, just a hit from the Penguin 2.1 algo update on October 3rd.

My concern is that given that there is not manual penalty, we can't ask for re-consideration and therefore have no idea when the next algo update will happen and if it will fix the problem.

With regard to traffic, they are getting around 500 visitors a month from direct traffic and almost nothing from referrals, however I was thinking that I would just set up an automatic redirect of the domain, or alternatively just set up a simply page telling customers 'we've moved'.  The domain would be similar, so brand name recognition would be ok going forward.

Just wanting to get some feedback from others dealing with Penguin hits on client's websites. We've got one particularly client that has been hit badly because of a high proportion of link toxicity. After running the Cemper Detox Tool we found that only about 25 links are healthy. We're actually thinking of dumping the domain and moving the website to a new domain and starting again with link building (manually grabbing as many of the existing healthy links as possible on the way).

Has anyone out there used this strategy? What do you think of the potential of the Sandbox of the new site vs. the Penguin hit on the old site. Do you think the 'drag' of Penguin is higher than the 'drag' of the Sandbox on rankings?

Thanks guys, look forward to your insight!