Personally I don't think these updates are anywhere near as complicated as people make out. Google will sign up to a host of services, they get free GSA lists with the disavow tool, and very likely a lot of innocent sites as people panic if they didn't place their link on the site itself. It's a blanket approach which will have the desired effect, a random hit with some seemingly clean sites losing out, collateral damage if you like. Think about it if they zero value all the links they get with the disavow tool of course those web 2's you hammered with GSA will lose effect. Someone in the original penguin 3 summed it up well, luck!
With a fresh, yet unused GSA list you will likely see nice gains, until the next update, Neg seo will cause GSA lists to eventually be disavowed by the neg seo victim. I actually saw a site today #1 for a pretty competitive local term, it had been neg seo'd with porn anchor, it is number 1 AFTER this update. I wish I had checked this niche before the update to see if it was #1 or if the links were devalued so not affecting the site in an adverse way. Anyway the comments above as sorta true asking such a question shows your lack of skill in seo, this is the problem with seo and how it gets a bad name, anyone thinks they can do seo. Real seo costs money, sometimes a ton of it, sure GSA-SER works, the problem is now google has a free method of getting the links, the disavow tool, well done google, that was a great idea, I mean it, let people give you the low quality links. I have no issues with google or Matt Cutts, they do their job, I get on with doing mine, to me it is a game, you win you lose but you carry on. The best advice I can give is be different, do web 2's work, yes, so thin content web 2's work, no (most of the time). Any "fake" site, see this as a network or web 2 has to BE real, if you can get someone to visit the site and they believe it is a genuine site, job done, that takes effort and maintenance, the lazy seo'er starts stumbling at this point.
I agree with testing but I'm pretty confident if you harvested a brand new clean GSA list, you'll see good results, again probably until the next update, the next step is a private network, not a service, but your own, things start costing money in this phase, done right, it's one of the most powerful methods out there, again done right needs effort. I laugh daily when I research sites and see wordpress sites crammed with articles from loans to milkshakes, trust me they are not real networks more like shining bright light in the pitch black for google.
Check out real business forums, they disavow anything they didn't do themselves, they have gotten a real link, they didn't put it there it must be bad (you get the irony here right!) this is a big part of why seemingly innocent sites get hit as well. Some even refuse to remove links wondering why on earth anyone would want a link removed from their site.
NEVER use GSA directory links, many sites are cloned as is and placed on new domains (in volume, the people doing this are 100% clueless in seo and lazy sods to boot, as well as clearly lacking any intelligence to think identical sites on different domains hold any value whatsoever), so as well as more low quality links they are duplicate penalty links, game over links, the more experienced will avoid these, the newbie doesn't know the difference.
Spinning, if done, should at least be from an original article and refreshed with more original articles on a frequent basis. You should approach tier 1,2 and 3 randomly not the usual web 2, spam method. Anyway there is enough there for you to digest.
