Please can we get one thing straight if possible... there is no such thing as an algorithmic penalty or a penguin/panda penalty. Nor is EMD.
A penalty only occurs when a member of staff at Google manually reviews your website and finds issue with it.
If you have suffered at the hands of Penguin, Panda, EMD or other updates then yes it may feel like a penalty but basically there are plenty of ways to dig your way out of it if you really want to, more often than not though, site owners want to find a short-cut which is kid of how they screwed up in the first place.