Poll: Does A Manual Action Removal Impact Google Rankings?

Poll: Does A Manual Action Removal Impact Google Rankings? 
I see many threads with complaints, excitement, sadness and fear in the forums. Most have to do with Google rankings. It goes like this...

The webmaster says something like, "my rankings and traffic from Google tanked," now I look and I have a manual action." Few days later they come back in and claim they submitted a reconsideration request and then days later, they yell with excitement that their manual action was revoked. They then sit back and wait but nothing happens. Their traffic doesn't improve, their rankings don't increase - they are in the same boat after the manual action is revoked that they were in during the penalty. With the exception that Google says they do not have a penalty.

A few weeks ago, I spent some time chatting in a Webmaster/Search Help desk Hangout where I asked about 9 minutes into the hangout about this. I asked, how soon does it take for the traffic and rankings to return.
There is a distinction between getting the manual action revoked and then for the traffic to return. It seems like many who do get a manual action revoked still need to spend a lot of time working on getting their rankings returned.

Author: Barry Schwartz