7 years old domain sandboxed for 8 months, wait or make a domain change?

[Ferray]

Hello folks

The questions is, if a domain, 7 years old being sandboxed due to "notice of unnatural links to website" does it make sense to make a domain change (301 permanent redirect and make a "domain change" under google webmaster tools) to another, aged(!) domain name?
Website being sandboxed for over 8 months already and there is no chance to do anything with those "unnatural" links to website...

Any suggestions?

[Ferray]

Thanks! Interesting article.

[Ferray]

Thanks, Sorry, it took me sometime to reply, I left on 16 and ust came back from abroad...

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. I agree with Zsolt that this isn't a "sandbox" issue - it sounds like a classic (and severe) link-based penalty. The 301 can work, but it's not risk-free. Usually, you'll retain some of the link-juice and not carry the penalty, but the penalty does transfer in some situations. There's no good way to tell when and if it will.

I'm afraid you're right on reconsideration - you'd have to cut the vast majority of the bad links, and that's going to be very tricky. Your only other option, if the bad links are generally low-quality links (spammy article marketing, for example, as opposed to paid links), is to build strong, relevant links going forward and let the bad links fade out over time. That depends a lot on the severity and type of bad links, though.

If you've been waiting for things to change for 8 months and building decent links in that time, the 301 may be your best recourse. It's a bit of a last resort and it's not guaranteed to work, but it sounds like you may need to try it.

[Jinx14678]

Also you can look at this as it is on this subject:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/getting-back-from-a-penalty-second-time-around

It took a very methodical approach to a reconsideration which i am sure Google appreciated, as cheesy as this might sound..... We all make mistakes, but it is if we learn from those mistakes that Google seems to care about..

[Jinx14678]

Recently i remember Rand Talking in a white board Friday that the OSE Algo does not account for any spam metrics that Google does, it does gives a Trust ranking metric based on best practices and . The trust metric may be a good metric to look at.

I look up to page 180.... Any ideas if a link from page authority of "1" is "bad" link?

Not necessarily.... a 1 just means it has not been indexed by OSE i believe.

Also I am not sure that "Unnatural Links" automatically equates to a penalized domain link, it may just simply mean you got to many links from too many sources in too short of a time that could only be achieved by automation....

So looking for "penalized" domains could be a wild goose chase. I think you are in a pretty tough spot. The best course of action could be just wait longer and see if the penalty passes as links fall off that are "suspect"

[Ferray]

Thanks...

it will be hard to find those bad links with this info:

| Page Authority | Domain Authority | Linking Root Domains | Total Links |
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| 78/100 | 74/100 | 2,250 | 17,366 |
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I look up to page 180.... Any ideas if a link from page authority of "1" is "bad" link?

P.S. but it might be a good idea for guys at seomoz to implement some tool that will show those bad links... I think they can do this by looking for same sources of links for penalized domains....

[NewGlobalVentures.comSEOTexas]

Try to run opensiteexplorer here on seomoz.

This will expose your backlinks. Additionally, you may also want to try virante.com.

We just found out that we had some bad IP's on a shared server, so we decided to pay the difference for a brand spankin' new dedicated server.

Hope this helps and good luck Ferray!

[Jinx14678]

I think Alan's theory is correct, but of course in theory

I would think as well that the bad links would not pass anything as he says they have already been discounted by G.

It appears you really do not have a choice.... And have little to loose with attempting the 301 as described, as you are already penalized.

At least if you do.... POSSIBLY the Good will follow, and the bad stay behind, but I am not sure if this is how it works though, but seems plausible. Also I believe penalties "drop off" after a while (1 - 2 years) as the "unnatural links" themselves will eventually drop off of G's index altogether.... Which will possibly drop the penalty.

Personally i would have a "Post 301 Strategy" in place to begin a link building campaign to this new URL that is high quality and informational in nature utilizing social signals heavily (BUT ETHICALLY ) and even stay away from White hat for a while as well until you establish a new "reputation" for yourself.

w00t!

[Ferray]

yes, asked for reconsideration already, few times actually, that didnt work, and as I said if anyone knows how write a reconsideration email, which  will make G people cry, I would pay for that

[Ferray]

• All links dropped to position 200+
• Received notification from them: "notice of unnatural links to website"
• and yes,  sent reconsideration to them, didn't work out.

If anyone can write a reconsideration email, which makes G people cry, I would pay for that

[AlanMosley]

So do i understand you have already asked for reconsideration?

I have reason to believe that if you 301 your links, bad news wont follow you, but that is just my opinon I have no way of proving it, just a exprience I had, I could be completely wrong.

My thinking is that your bad links have been discouned already, your domain has ben punished, your 301 will not get credit for bad links only the good ones.

Changing is always a headache, but if you dont you will always wonder if you ae doing as well as you should.

[AlanMosley]

How do you know it is penalized?

Did they notify you?

Have you asked for reconsideration?

[Ferray]

doesn't penalized domain loses its PR? as our domain still has PR4...

[Ferray]

Tried to explain to G... didn't work out... stuck here with penalized domain trying to figure out if to try and continue the hard work of creating press releases and articles to this penalized domains  in hope that it will be break out from the penalty or just start from scratch and do all this work on new domain...

if moving to new domain, cant do that without 301...  another question if there is anything good or bad in doing this, like getting all previous PR to new domain or getting this domain penalized right away, or maybe just neutral as we will have to make all SEO from the scratch...

still need to decide what to do..

[Jinx14678]

You need to ask for a reconsideration if you cannot get those links removed.

You need to explain what happened (Did you hire an SEO firm who got these "unnatural" links.) Explain exactly what happened and if you were inexperienced when you did this, there are lots of SEO firms out there that claim they use "100% White Hat Tactics" Which in most cases is complete BS as a white hat tactic is not thousands of links in a day..... No matter how you want to spin it. (Before anyone screams at me yes there are perfectly rational explanations for a thousand links in a day sometimes.... Sometimes....)

There is a CHANCE (small chance) Google will take this info into consideration and give you a "reprise" or second chance...

I am not sure I would 301 a penalized domain to a new domain, but of course understand this may be un-avoidable.

Sorry for your troubles

w00t!

[sesertin]

Great question, honestly, i haven't got a good answer

[Ferray]

Thanks Zsolt

I see. The problem is that this website was pretty high in SEO results before the penalty happened, and this domain has too many links – tens of thousand, it is just impossible to discover which links are "bad" and even more harder to remove them... The domain authority is 72 which is pretty high as I see it, PR 4...

so if this is not a sandbox, there is no reason to wait for website to get out of it by himself, so, does it worth to move website to a new domain, as I understand 301 should pass PR, not sure about authority rank...

[sesertin]

The case you mention is not sandboxing but penalty due to bad links. Sandbox only occurs with totally new domains in the first few months. Maybe you or the previous owner of the domain have purchased bulk links and google discovered it. You should remove those links and ask for reconsideration in google webmasters.