Strange situation - Started over with a new site. WMT showing the links that previously pointed to old site.
-
I have a client whose site was severely affected by Penguin. A former SEO company had built thousands of horrible anchor texted links on bookmark pages, forums, cheap articles, etc.
We decided to start over with a new site rather than try to recover this one. Here is what we did:
-We noindexed the old site and blocked search engines via robots.txt
-Used the Google URL removal tool to tell it to remove the entire old site from the index
-Once the site was completely gone from the index we launched the new site. The new site had the same content as the old other than the home page. We changed most of the info on the home page because it was duplicated in many directory listings. (It's a good site...the content is not overoptimized, but the links pointing to it were bad.)
-removed all of the pages from the old site and put up an index page saying essentially, "We've moved" with a nofollowed link to the new site.
We've slowly been getting new, good links to the new site. According to ahrefs and majestic SEO we have a handful of new links. OSE has not picked up any as of yet. But, if we go into WMT there are thousands of links pointing to the new site. WMT has picked up the new links and it looks like it has all of the old ones that used to point at the old site despite the fact that there is no redirect.
There are no redirects from any pages of the old to the new at all.
The new site has a similar name. If the old one was examplekeyword.com, the new one is examplekeywordcity.com.
There are redirects from the other TLD's of the same to his (i.e. examplekeywordcity.org, examplekeywordcity.info), etc. but no other redirects exist.
The chances that a site previously existed on any of these TLD's is almost none as it is a unique brand name.
Can anyone tell me why Google is seeing the links that previously pointed to the old site as now pointing to the new?
ADDED: Before I hit the send button I found something interesting. In this article from dejan SEO where someone stole Rand Fishkin's content and ranked for it, they have the following line:
"When there are two identical documents on the web, Google will pick the one with higher PageRank and use it in results. It will also forward any links from any perceived ’duplicate’ towards the selected ‘main’ document."
This may be what is happening here.
And just to complicate things further, it looks like when I set up the new site in GA, the site owner took the GA tracking code and put it on the old page. (The noindexed one that is set up with a nofollowed link to the new one.) I can't see how this could affect things but we're removing it.
Confused yet?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
-
My tip here is to return 404 to your old domain and customize your 404 page telling people that you moved to a new domain.
This approach will gives Google the appearance that your site has been discontinued but for users you just moved.
One extra thing is to try add a meta refresh in this 404 page, transferring users to the new domain.
Hope it helps.
-
Hi Marie,
I think your answer is here http://dejanseo.com.au/hijacked/. Correct me if I am wrong.
-
Thanks. I thought we had noindexed, nofollowed the old domain but it looks like that was not done. There is no robots.txt.
The old page only exists as a single page that says, "We've moved" with a nofollow link to the new one. All of the content and inner pages are gone.
I'll have him noindex and add robots.txt. I still can't see how that would cause Google to attribute links to the new page.
-
Is your old domain still blocking search engines via robots.txt? Or did you remove this rule?
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
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
Using copy from a current site on a new one
I have a client who is closing down his local business because he'smoving to another state. When he gets there he will launch a new website.On his current website, he put in a lot of work and has a ton of good copy, including blog posts that have helped gain him excellent rankings.He's asking me if he can use that copy on his new site and get original author credit for that, like he did on his current site.Can he use the same copy from his current website on his new websitewithout any problems — and get original author credit for it?Would it be best to shut down the old site or to 301 all of the pages beingmoved to the new corresponding pages?If 301's are the way to go, how long should he leave those in place?Thanks!Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates1 -
How to jumpstart a new Ecommerce site
Hello, I've got a new Ecommerce site I'm jumpstarting. It's one of those sites that takes a while to rank for. Here's what we're doing: 1. Creating a beautiful, mobile friendly site. 2. Adding a long detailed home page answering all the questions that people come to our industry keyword results with. 3. Adding detailed, beautiful cateogy pages. 4. Adding detailed, beautiful product pages. 5. Adding beautiful, long About Us & Resource Sites list pages. 6. Offering straight up obvious free shipping and no tax even though that's taking a hit in our industry. 7. We're going after the 2 main informational terms (keyword explorer) in the industry with a vengance - 20X as good as the competition for the main term. 8. We're adding 20-30 pages of articles to help our customers and hit major keyword search terms, although there's not much in our industry. What else would you recommend doing to jumpstart a new Ecommerce site that has difficulty being in the top 50? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Preserving link equity from old pages
Hi Moz Community, We have a lot of old pages built with Dreamweaver a long time ago (2003-2010) which sit outside our current content management system. As you'd expect they are causing a lot of trouble with SEO (Non-responsive, duplicate titles and various other issues). However, some of these older pages have very good backlinks. We were wondering what is the best way to get rid of the old pages without losing link equity? In an ideal world we would want to bring over all these old pages to our CMS, but this isn't possible due to the amount of pages (~20,000 pages) and cost involved. One option is obviously to bulk 301 redirect all these old pages to our homepage, but from what we understand that may not lead to the link equity being passed down optimally by Google (or none being passed at all). Another option we can think of would be to bring over the old articles with the highest value links onto the current CMS and 301 redirect the rest to the homepage. Any advice/thoughts will be greatly appreciated. Thumbs up! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3gcouk0 -
Malicious site pointed A-Record to my IP, Google Indexed
Hello All, I launched my site on May 1 and as it turns out, another domain was pointing it's A-Record to my IP. This site is coming up as malicious, but worst of all, it's ranking on keywords for my business objectives with my content and metadata, therefore I'm losing traffic. I've had the domain host remove the incorrect A-Record and I've submitted numerous malware reports to Google, and attempted to request removal of this site from the index. I've resubmitted my sitemap, but it seems as though this offending domain is still being indexed more thoroughly than my legitimate domain. Can anyone offer any advice? Anything would be greatly appreciated! Best regards, Doug
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FranGen0 -
How to cross-link a network of dozen hotel booking sites
Hi, I have about a dozen hotel booking sites in different cities. All content is unique on each site and specific to its city. Is it a good idea to cross-link them all? If so, is there any strategy to follow? Some of them are older and well established sites wheres others were created recently. The goal is to improve rankings of the newer sites. I appreciate any advice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmotuz0 -
Asking Sites to Remove Links.. What should I say?
After getting some guidance from you guys here on this forum i have decided to go through my WMT backlinks and contact all the sites that I think are spammy and are linking back to me....and I will ask them to remove my links from their sites... Can you guys please provide some guidance as to what I should say in the letter (also, anything i should definitely not say).... Thanks for the help...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Making a site back link checker proof
Is it possible to make your site un readable by the back link checkers such as open explorer ? Or would it have a negative effect on search engine rankings. Sorry I have been in the business for 10 years and it has never crossed my mind. Figured I would say that before I get all the "I can't believe you don't know that" type comments 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0