The page layout algorithms/penalty that penalizes sites with too many ads distracting users from the main content is supposedly an algorithm that is automated and doesn't need to be manually run.
We discussed the concept of the real time algorithms when Penguin 4.0 launched. In short, you make a change to your site, Google's crawlers pick up on the change and then your rankings should automatically adjust soon after.
I asked John Mueller of Google this in yesterday's hangout at the 48 minute mark. I asked:
John, is that algorithm -- you have to run it manually and it checks the website? Or it's constant like real time? So when you remove ads that might be causing the algorithm to penalize the website or downgrade the website, if you remove the ads, will it-- once Google reprocesses or reindexes the page-- will it automatically bump up? Or it has to be run manually?
John replied:
That's pretty much automatic in the sense that it's probably not live, one-to-one. We just would recalled this, therefore, we know exactly what it looks like. But it is something that's updated automatically. And it is something where when you change those pages, you don't have to wait for any manual update on our side for that to be taken into account.
He did not say the words "real time" but he said it is automated and implied no algorithm needs to rerun.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at Google+.
