On February 6, 2014, Google did their third refresh to the Page Layout algorithm.
I am happy to report that some webmasters who were initially hit by either the first or second implementations of the Page Layout algorithm have reported recoveries on February 6th.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has a couple stories, here is one:
Lost 50% traffic then, in one hour. In years never recovered until now, this change, February 6th, 2014. I'm 25-30% up, high for top keywords.Even though it's about 2.5 years too late, I will take an acknowledgement of all the positive changes I made since that penalty, and I hope it sticks around.
After I redesigned my site in early 2012 using Matt's recommendations, this site, google above fold view tool and removed ads above fold (It was too many, I admit it then and now, I followed adsense suggestions blindly), text naturally moved up. I left site alone and have not touched it since but to add new pages, in that same redesigned early 2012 style.
Of course, with any stories or recovery examples, we do not have access to their raw data, so we are taking their word for it.
And of course, with any recovery story, there are many stories of sites that were penalized by Google with this update.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
