Alternative domains redirected with 301 to the main domain
-
Hi everyone
I've got a website which gained a Panda penalty back in March 2012 which was because of the implementation of a range of spammy practices (keyword stuffing in titles, indexed category and tag pages, duplicate domains).
I've fixed the titles and deindexed any pages that could be seen as thin or duplicate so I'm confident that any onsite Panda issues have been fixed.
As mentioned above the client had also created over 40 alternative domains to the website and pointed them to their main website folders (hence duplicating the website and content 40 times over). These domains have now been redirected via 301 redirects to the main website to ensure that any links they have gained are captured.
The reason for the redirection is that we initially took the domains down and saw a drop in traffic and this seemed to be the most likely reason. While Moz and Majestic are not showing any significant links to these domains (which is why they where originally taken down), past experience has told me that these tools don't always pick up all referring domains.
Primary domain
5 Example Alternative Domains
- presentationskillslondon.com
- workingvoiceslive.biz
- workingvoices.co.uk
- livingvoices.co.uk
- working-voices.net
Question 1: At the same time we took down the alternative domains (and experienced the drop in traffic) we removed duplicate instances of Google Analytics code from the webpages. All the guidance that we could find stated that duplicate instances of code shouldn't affect your Analytics numbers, hence we assumed it was the taking down of the alternative domains, but maybe the guidance we found was wrong?
Question 2: It is 3 months later and these alternative domains are still indexed by Google, and Panda hasn't run since October 2014 so we haven't experienced a recovery yet. Redirecting the domains will remove any issue of a Panda penalty, but now of course I am worried about Penguin - the last thing I want to do is trigger that can of worms!
This whole saga has been pretty complicated and I think I need some fresh sets of eyes.
What does everyone think? Could the initial drop have been due to the duplicate Analytics code being removed? Could the redirecting domains trigger Penguin? Should we take the alternative domains down and be done with them? Any other thoughts!
Looking forward to hearing your opinions!
Damon.
-
Question 1: Could duplicate instances of code affect your Analytics numbers?
Yes, but not all of them. Duplicate Google Analytics roughly doubles your page views, pages per session, and causes your bounce rates to fall to nearly zero. Other metrics are not impacted.
Question 2: Paraphrased - can Penguin penalties transfer with a redirect?
Yes. See - http://moz.com/community/q/site-penalized-301-redirect-question. There doesn't seem to be clear direction on that particular question but general consensus is yes, penalties transfer.
You don't mention timing. When did you put the redirects in place? Have visitors had a chance to experience the redirects and learn the new domain? Have you used Tools to identify incoming links to the 40 domains and changed the substantive ones to point to workingvoices.com?
If it were me, I'd remove the redirects and be patient. It can take Google quite a while to drop pages from it's index. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to try to expedite their removal, but it doesn't always work.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A huge spike in traffic, mainely from social and organic
Hi there, We see this huge spike in traffic to our home page for almost a week now. When I check the source I see a crazy spike in Facebook traffic (25,630% change!!), Twitter and organic. The spike in traffic is to our home page alone. The bounce rate is much higher than avg. and time on page is shorter. Also, no. of new visitors to the site is higher than average. The traffic is obviously low quality and is hurting our site's statistics. Any ideas as to why this is happening? Many thanks in advance, Gal
Reporting & Analytics | | tomedess0 -
How to not track mobile redirects in Google Analytics
If a user is on a mobile device and comes to our home page, http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Home/ they are redirected to http://m.darden.virginia.edu/web/Home/. We want a way to remove all the redirects from our Google analytics reports. More specifically we do not want to include the the page view of http://www.darden.virginia.edu/web/Home/ in our page view count when the user is on a mobile device. How do we do that?
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
Godaddy 301 redirect
Hi, Happy Holidays to all! Although, this is not Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for becoming a member of this site. I ahve learned so much. Here is yet another question hping to have answered by the pundits of this SEOMOZ: I have a site built on site builder and hosted on Yahoo Hosting which does not allow 301 Redirects; I was fortunate enough to have someone help opn this site explain to me how to use Godaddy (they are my domain provide) to 301 through forwarding, work great! My http://domain.com now directs to www.domain.com , the only problem I am having now is, on :sitebuilder" the index page is classified as index.html, thus providing duplicate content again. Can you do two redirects through Godaddy? In othert words, my http://domain.com/ goes to www.domain.com/ eliminating duplicent content, but now I have another URL - http:..domain.com/index.html how do i get rid of that to prevent dup content. Any feed back would be great, Happy Holidays! Jimmy
Reporting & Analytics | | jimmy02250 -
Analytics Alternative
Google analytics '"not provided" is driving me insane. Can anyone recommend a half decent analytics program that will not clog up my site. I cant help but feel that Google are devaluing their own product as more and more people switch to chrome and are encouraged to use a logged in account. For me it makes analytics about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
Reporting & Analytics | | easyrider20 -
Setting up Webmaster Tools correctly - naked domain DNS error and sub-domains question
I'm trying to get our domain (verdantly.com) set up correctly in Google Webmaster Tools. Currently, I have three "sites" setup: blog.verdantly.com (wordpress.com blog redirected to this subdomain) www.verdantly.com verdantly.com The subdomain blog and www show up without errors. However, the naked domain shows a DNS error. I've checked the DNS settings at the registrar and don't see any issues. So here are my questions: 1. Am I correct in setting up the naked domain AND the subdomains separately in Webmaster tools? 2. How do I track down / resolve the source of the DNS errors at the naked domain? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | letsdothis0 -
Large recent drop in "Domain Authority" and backlinks through OSE
Hello, I've noticed that our sites domain authority has dropped enormously this past week according to Open Site Explorer. It also shows us as having lost about half of our backlinks. Google webmaster tools doesn't show a corresponding drop in links and we haven't done anything to our domain recently. Anyone have any ideas what might have happened? Our site is at: http://www.GoldMaxUSA.com Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | JFritton0 -
GA Tracking Code for Ecommerce cross-domain tracking
I need help. Scenario: Microsite: www.example.com Prospect clickc "buy" button and is taken to 3rd party ecommerce cart (e.g. shop.domain.com) Questions: Will the Google Analytics Code sample below allow us to track what we need? We need to exact syntax code for the micro site. What is the specific code that needs to be added on the 3rd party shopping cart pages.
Reporting & Analytics | | 190west0 -
Linking domain dropped followed by significant decrease in Domain Authority
A relatively high ranking site disappeared from the linking root domains of a client site, and the site dropped significantly in domain rank, authority, and trust. Oddly enough, traffic is almost double the previous week, and search results for keywords remain strong. I checked OSE and the linking domain is not listed. There are also several other linking root domains that have never shown in the domain analysis, but we'll leave those for a later topic. I visited the linking root domain that disappeared from the analysis and found everything to be in order. The site is a major local forum with a relatively high domain authority. All links are still there, and there hasn't been any change to the site as far as links are treated according to the owner. The only thing that has changed since the last site analysis is an event campaign ran with unpaid ads posted throughout the forum. The site being analyzed is a catering company that is cooperating with the forum owner and local bar to host a local celebratory event. Of course I'll wait for the next indexing to see if things change, but what could be going on here? This is more of an SEOmoz question, as we're talking over 10 point deduction in domain authority, although search results are still strong.
Reporting & Analytics | | kwoolf0