Do penalties ever go away?

[jwbond]

well i screwed up and tried to create a fake site to bring in more traffic to my site. anyhow im 90% sure google penalized me now, big time. is there anything i can do short of a different domain and new site? please help

[John Scott]

Some penalties are 30 day penalties, like the hidden text penalty.
Most penalties are not real but imagined. I'd need to see the site in question to know more.

[samer]

i have some hidden text, but my site hasn't has a penalty ..

[Thanol]

@samer Some? You have like as much hidden text as you do real text! Get rid of it before the algothorim figures out it's hidden text.

[Jazzee]

Yea, you should get rid of that. You'll regret it if you get caught.

[kbba04527]

Thats a damn lot of hidden text, why repeat the word that much, isn't there more terms you could use.

[samer]

K i'm gonna remove it !

[samer]

K i'm gonna remove it !
but it already took me from page 21 on google to page 3
:-)