Google penalty or simply the site drop - it's almost the same. Your affiliate site may lose rankings and traffic one day. But in fact, it happens gradually - for some time. If you see the site drop during 7-14 days, the new Google Update is happening. Anyway - you can suffer from a manual or algorithmic penalty.
The scenarios for recovery are almost the same - you need to identify the reason for your website drop and get rid of the penalty. It's almost impossible for the affiliate site to eliminate the manual penalty. But in most cases, it all amounts to the Algo Update.
In this 21 points checklist, I have revealed the whole work that needs to be done for the successful recovery of your affiliate site. I manage 30 websites these days, and I have spent so much time learning the basics of website recovery in Google. You've got new tools to recover, so follow the best practices to bring your site positions and traffic back.
