7 years old domain sandboxed for 8 months, wait or make a domain change?
-
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?
-
Thanks! Interesting article.
-
Thanks, Sorry, it took me sometime to reply, I left on 16 and ust came back from abroad...
-
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.
-
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..
-
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"
-
Thanks...
it will be hard to find those bad links with this info:
| Page Authority | Domain Authority | Linking Root Domains | Total Links |
|
|
|
|
| 78/100 | 74/100 | 2,250 | 17,366 |
|
|
|
|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....
-
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!
-
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!
-
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
-
- 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
-
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.
-
How do you know it is penalized?
Did they notify you?
Have you asked for reconsideration?
-
doesn't penalized domain loses its PR? as our domain still has PR4...
-
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..
-
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!
-
Great question, honestly, i haven't got a good answer
-
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...
-
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.
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
-
Domain dominance
I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course). I have two questions: 1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire? 2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LJHopkins0 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Should I increase SEO activity while we are restructuring our B2C service offerings and planning a product relaunch in about 6-8 months?
My company has 2 distinct divisions: a B2B division and a B2C division. Right now we are restructuring our B2C service offerings and pulling back on marketing spend for B2C so that we can relaunch new B2C offerings in about 6-8 months. Our current company website will stay in place but will be revamped right before our B2C relaunch (will maintain the same domain). Currently, our company has little to no SEO presence for both B2C and B2B. I need to know if it is smart for us to increase SEO activity right now for the B2C division, knowing that it can take up to 6 months to get SEO traction so that when we do relaunch we have a strong established SEO presence. Thanks for your sharing your thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VISANOW0 -
How to know the real history of a domain
Dear mates, I'm looking for register a new domain, and I'm looking for its history on http://web.archive.org/, my question is how to know if this domain has been penalized by Google, banned etc?. Please let me know your ideas. Thank you Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
Subdomain, subfolder or separate domains?
Hi Mozzers, We're in the process of re-developing and redesigning several of our websites, and moving them all onto the same content management system. At the moment, although the websites are all under the same brand and roughly the same designs, because of various reasons they all either live on a separate domain to the main website, or are on a subdomain. Here's a list of what we have (and what we're consolidating): Main site - http://www.frenchentree.com/ Property database - http://france-property.frenchentree.com/ (subdomain) Forum - http://www.france-forum-frenchentree.com/ (separate domain) Classified ads - http://www.france-classified-ads-frenchentree.com/ (separate domain) My question to you lovely people is: should we take this opportunity through the redevelopment of the CMS to put everything into subfolders of the main domain? Keep things as they are? Put each section onto a subdomain? What's best from an SEO perspective? For information - the property database was put onto a subdomain as this is what we were advised to do by the developers of the system. We're starting to question this decision though, as we very rarely see subdomains appear in SERPs for any remotely competitive search terms. Our SEO for the property database is fairly non-existent, and only ever really appears in SERPs for brand related keywords. For further info - the forum and classifieds were under a separate brand name previously, so keeping them on separate domains felt correct at that time. However, with the redevelopment of our sites, it seems to make more sense to either put them on subdomains or subfolders of the main site. Our SEO for the forum is pretty strong, though has dwindled in the last year or so. Any help/advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0 -
Site unaffected by algo changes until this month- why?
I had 2 websites. One of these I trashed as it took a pretty big hit from Panda and was virtually wiped out by Penguin. The other site is over 4 years old and until this month had miraculously remained unaffected by all the changes. In fact, my traffic this October was better than it had ever been. This month my traffic is way, way down. I don't know if this is related to the hurricane (my business is in NYC) or if it is just a factor that web traffic to any site can fluctuate considerably from month to month, or if there is a more insiduous reason. Most of my links are directory links, including some good ones like DMOZ and BOTW , and the most high quality directories I could find. The site is www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com. . Does anyone have any ideas? thx Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | diogenes0 -
How to make Google forget my pages ?
Hello all ! I've decided to delete many pages from my website wich had poor content. I've made a php 301 redirect from all these old pages to a unique page (not the home page, a deep page). My problem is that this modification has been made a week ago and my position in the SERPs have crashed down... What can I do ? I believe that I'll get up again when Google will see that these pages don't exist anymore but it could take a long time 😞 (these page are in the Google cache with a date older than my modification's date) I've read somewhere that I should put a link to the destination page (where old pages are 301 redirected) but I don't understand how it could help... Can someone help me ? Tell me what I've done wrong... These pages were very poor and I've deleted them in order to boost the global quality of my site... It should help me in the SERPs, not penalize me...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | B-CITY0 -
Is using frameset to usurp PR from an old domain okay?
I have a competitor who leapfrogged in Google SERPs after they purchased a domain that was let let go by a related authoritative organization and used it to redirect traffic from it to their website using frameset code. Is this a legit practice? Is this blackhat SEO? Here's the entirety of the code from the retired domain: <html> <head> <title>www.competitors-website.com title> <META name="description" content="www.competitors-website.com"> <META name="keywords" content="www.competitors-website.com"> head> <frameset rows="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="http://www.competitors-website.com" frameborder="0" /> <frame frameborder="0" noresize /> frameset> html>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Linesides0