If you have been wondering about whether or not Google is still sending out unnatural inbound link manual actions now that Penguin has changed over to the new real time Penguin, the question came up in a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours.  The new real time Penguin, which launched in September 2016, was a significantly different Penguin from the previous non-real-time versions that Google had launched.

Google also said at the time of launch that the new Penguin wasn’t replacing manual actions and that they would still be sending out manual actions to sites with unnatural links.

The person who asked about it commented that they hadn’t seen any new inbound link manual actions being sent since Google released the long awaited real time Penguin.

Yes, of course, it still happens, yes.  The webspam team is still active and taking action on unnatural links on both directions, so that’s not something we’ve stopped doing since Penguin.

There have also been many reports in the Google Webmaster Help Forums on these manual actions being sent out since Penguin launched.  So yes, Google is still sending both unnatural inbound links and outbound links manual actions.