A search penalty restricts visibility for policy violations. A manual action has an explicit report; a traffic decline alone does not prove a penalty.
Check for a manual action
A Google manual action is a policy-related restriction recorded in the Manual Actions report in Search Console. Read the stated issue and the affected scope before deciding what to repair. An action affecting part of a site is different from a problem affecting every URL.
Correct the documented violation, review related pages or practices, and submit a reconsideration request where the report provides that route. The review concerns the action described; it is not a general request to improve rankings.
Investigate a decline without assuming a penalty
A loss of traffic does not establish that a search engine penalised the site. Compare the affected pages and queries, indexing changes, technical releases, seasonal demand and published search-system information. Check whether the decline affects impressions, clicks or both.
Historical names such as Panda and Penguin can help explain the development of search systems, but they do not provide a current diagnosis. A chart that falls near an update date is a reason to investigate, not proof of the cause.
Choose a remedy for the actual problem
A broken route needs a routing repair; inaccurate or unhelpful content needs editorial work; a documented policy violation needs its underlying practice corrected. Routine disavowal and waiting for the next update are not universal recovery methods.
After the repair, verify the affected pages and then watch comparable search data over an appropriate period. Recovery time varies, and an implementation check cannot establish when a search system will reassess the site.