
You&A with Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan at SMX Advanced in Seattle, WA
During the You&A session with Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan at SMX Advanced 2012 in Seattle, WA, Matt Cutts told everyone that a notification or a message in Google Webmastertools account means that a manual action took place and you were penalized by Google. Just want to be clear, that means GWT notifications have nothing to do with algorithmic changes, so if you got one of those, clean up, take action and submit a reconsideration request. According to Matt its implemented not too long ago (less than 1 month ago) and in 99% of all cases webmasters are hit with manual penalty.