Redirecting a penalized domain to a new one to remove penalty?

[sbrault74]

I've got this website that has been hit quite hard by the first Penguin update round.

Would it be better to move all my content to another domain and do a 301 redirect? Or should I keep the penalized domain and try to clean up the bad link profile?

Also I must say that the website has been hacked last fall and the hacker was able to upload porn stuff in one of the folders. Needless to say, I quickly acquired tons of links from porn and warez. And no, porn and warez has nothing to do with my website's topic.

Thank you for your help!

Stephane

[OrionGroup]

Any update on 301's passing penalt to a new domain?

[em_welsby]

Sorry I'm late to the conversation but I was just wondering, in a scenario where you have been punished just for bad links but the quality of your site is fine, If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start?

[MarieHaynes]

I have seen people report that they have escaped a penalty by redirecting a Penguin hit site to a new domain, but really this is likely to just be temporary.  Once another Penguin refresh happens, you'll probably get hit again on the new domain.

As EGOL mentioned, Penguin is not so much about content, but rather about links.  If you redirect, those redirections will still take the links with them.  (We think that 90-99% of link juice is transmitted through a redirect.)  So, if you got penalized because of bad links then those bad links will still be pointing at the new site via a redirect.

I'm not an expert on getting links removed, but I had this thought.  You mentioned that someone hacked your site and put porn in one folder and it was this porn stuff that attracted links.  Can you not just remove the pages that have the porn?  And tell Google in your WMT to deindex those pages?  Or do those pages also contain your money content as well?

Edit: I think I need to be a little more clear.  I was thinking that the goal would be to remove the pages that are attracting the links.  If the links point to 404's do they still count?  I'm guessing no?

[EGOL]

Penguin problems are because your site has bad links.

If you have a penguin problem the 301 redirect will assign those bad links to the new site.

If you do other types of redirects your search rankings in Bing/Yahoo will probably disappear.

[sbrault74]

I never rinse dirty cups. I just fill it with water and bam! free coffee!

[sbrault74]

How about a meta or javascript redirect then?

The content is unique and valuable. Relaunching a new website would cost me about $3000.

[EGOL]

it still brings in about $1500 a month from Bing/Yahoo.

OK... leave it up for that money.

Why no redirect?

The same reason why you rinse a dirty cup.

[sbrault74]

Why no redirect?

Even though the website has lost 80% of traffic, it still brings in about $1500 a month from Bing/Yahoo.

[NakulGoyal]

With all the information you have provided, it's always worth a shot to file a reconsideration with Google, but then the most you'd expect back is an automated reply within 1-4 weeks. After that, when your website starts showing up, if it starts showing up (which is further dependent on whether there was any manual penalty). If it was just algorithmic loss of rankings, then the reconsideration won't do anything. If I were you, and I have tried all of the above options, then obviously the last resort is a new domain, but then I don't think I would do a 301 from the old penalized domain to the new domain.

[EGOL]

Just saying what I would do... this isn't advice.

If your content sucks or is mediocre.  Walk away.

If your content is unique and fantastic.  Hire a security pro to clean up the files and the database.  Move it to a new domain and start promoting it with white hat methods.

Forget about the redirects.