https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-good-links-penguin-19696.html
Quote
Google's John Mueller said Penguin looks at links at an "aggregated level across everything that we have from your website" and thus, if the algorithm tips in the favor of good links, then you are going to see a recovery. Now, he wouldn't say what the percentage was - because (1) he doesn't likely know and (2) it probably doesn't work on a percentage. But he said it is possible to recover without disavowing or removing links, but he would still recommend you remove bad links.
It's worth watching the section of the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba_qLBFlIe4&feature=youtu.be&t=33m52s
Long discussion here... very long... on the SEO Roundtable situation.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4726127.htm
To be honest, I thought the more interesting point was that even after you correct the issue that caused a manual penalty, you're still in the doghouse for a while and need to rebuild authority somehow.
The bits I find funny:
Quotethe majority of his links are directories or websites selling links,
Yahoo. That was the paid for authority in the day for getting a good base to rank from. Now that sort of thing is so clearly not good Karma.
however in the next breath:
QuoteMeanwhile, he goes ahead and gets some good-quality links,
GETS? how exactly? I thought we are not supposed to "get" links, that manipulation. So we cannot buy, bribe,pay swap, cheat, steal, cajole, pursuade people to give us links. But we can "get" them. nice, good quality ones. Off ebay perhaps . :)
Its a screwed up system, and not getting any better.
QuoteI mean, would the penalty actually get removed if the majority of the percentage of low-quality links diminishes? The actual Penguin penalty-- would it be removed?
JOHN MUELLER: Yeah. That's something that our algorithms would take into account--
I find that difficult to believe. My experience says it really does not work like that, not for commercial sites anyway.