Manual Google Action - Have you ever recovered from one?

Dear BHW members,

I think there may be a fair few of you who have recovered from a manual Google action, so I have a question for you.

Some background - I want to purchase a domain but I know for a 100% fact it has both had a manual penalty against it and then received notice that the penalty has been rescinded. The domain is an EMD and is my 1st choice to build upon, 3X the search traffic of the nearest comparable & brandable. It is a decent size investment so I do not want to buy a turkey.

My question is, even when you have recovered from a Google penalty did you still get the feeling the domain had a black mark against it in terms of where it ranked for various search terms?

I am particularly interested in hearing from anyone who may have purchased a domain with an action against it, not realizing, and then submitted a reconsideration request and built upon the domain.

Any advice appreciated.

Someone on BHW has experienced this and can share something with me, surely.

I have to laugh that on a forum where after every Panda & Penguin 10 gurus pop up claiming to know whats what there is not 1 constructive bit of advice.

Quality.

For future reference, if anyone comes across this thread looking for an answer, this is the best I found online. It did not really answer my question fully but there you go.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/definitive-guide-recovering-manual-search-penalty/88057/

http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase

I wouldn't go for it personally would much rather go for a different expired domain in the same niche. If you want a perfect example of a manual action removal which is performing extremely well now interflora take the cake.

As you would hear in WMT videos starting with a penalized domain is putting you at a disadvantage from the get go (hence not recommended)

I have had manual spam actions removed (for unnatural links). The websites never recovered. In fact they ranked way worse than before I bought the links that got them hit. I just 301 them to a different domain once the penalty is gone to pass on the juice from the links that weren't considered spam. Works great.

I have recovered from a manual penalty as well 3 years ago and have never regained great rankings even though my link profile now is much better than before... I personally think that once you have had a manual penalty even though they say they have "removed" the penalty and all is good there is still some sort of a your fuc$ed factor with the domain. Sucks bad as the domain cost me 6 figures 5 years ago. ROAR

Thank you Tactician & Zombie Pop. 420Friendly, that was exactly what I was looking for in terms of experience with a high end domain.