Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
-
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs.
Having just read this excellent discussion,
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience
I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains.
I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689
Is it safe to 301?
What's the latest thinking?
-
Thanks Karl.
-
Thanks Francis, that example is useful.
-
Ok, you'll probably be able to get the good links for your new domain then. Good luck with it all.
-
My skepticism is based on what I have tested myself by redirecting a single page with too many spammy links (I would say, an infected page) to a new page tanked the traffic of the website. If you scale that, redirecting a penalised old domain to a new domain may give you the same bad result. Simple logic on my part.
I would rather work on reviving that established same old domain. Keep going. Do what you are supposed to do - clean it, brand build it further, etc.
-
Hi Carson,
Thanks for your considered reply.
I was very interested to hear your opinion about unnatural links warnings via GWT and whether they can be necessarily interpreted as manual penalties.
As usual there are conflicting opinions and the particular wording in the warning I saw is different from the wording I have seen quoted in other examples on the web. It has a feel of being slightly more tailored ... although algorithms can do tailoring!
It seems logical that Google would use an algorithmic approach wherever possible in the interests of economy and consistency but there have to be sanity checks by real people so maybe GWT emails can be triggered by algorithm or human override.
The first sentence in both your "manual penalties" and also your "refreshing adjustments" suggest to me that it might not be possible to outmanoeuvre penalties by side-stepping (domain switching).
Maybe there's also an argument here that what's best for the user should be what's best for SEO?
What's best for the user must surely be not to confuse them or change domains so maybe that's the best approach also from an SEO POV.
Oh boy. I love SEO but I think I'll do some gardening tomorrow.
-
Hi Karl,
Thanks. The situation is I reckon > 90% low quality or spammy links. I estimate I might be able to get between 10% and 30% deleted with several days work but which still produces no certainty of a successful re-consideration request. There are only a handful of good links which I know I could get re-coded to a new domain. This is a small business so flogging a dead horse is precious money down the drain .
The domain is businessnamemainkeyword.com and I could host on businessname-mainkeyword.com i.e. only difference is the dash.
-
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your answer.
Undoubtedly the safest decision is to take no risk at all i.e. use no redirects. That might not be the decision with the most profitable expected outcome. What if you knew, with hindsight, that you could have used redirects with only a 2% probability of a minor adverse impact on the new domain? That could have been a big opportunity lost by taking the safest option..
Again, I'm trying to get away from hunches and better understand the size and nature of the risks (probably by reference to empirical data i.e. specific cases) to give the best chance of making the best decision.
-
Hi Francis,
Thanks for your answer. From what you say, you have seen cases where redirects have been fine but you're skeptical which is a slightly mixed message.
I am aware that there might be a risk of 'infecting' the new domain. I'm just trying to get some kind of handle on the level of that risk (if that is possible).
Would you say:
1. Don't touch a 301 with a barge pole under any circumstances or
2. You should be OK under 'these circumstances' or
3. It's pot luck or
4. No need to worry about the consequences of 301s because Google will give you a fresh start. They know your motive for ditching the old domain and will filter the bad links from impacting the new domain, recognising you're a business that's been established for 1,000 years (from your business name, address, telephone number, company number etc.). Yeah, I know that last bit is probably my idealism getting the better of me.
How to quantify the risk to make the best decision?
-
Hi Ewan,
This is a question that probably deserves a blog post at some point, along with a number of related questions about link-based penalties. I've been gathering info for some time, and have seem many instances of redirecting sites that have been penalized. I wish I could collect data on penalized sites more scientifically, but we work with what's available.
Manual Penalties
Manual penalties appear to carry through to new domains almost instantly when redirected to pages housing the same content. Google appears to use a number of signals to make sure that the redirect is to the same site and not to a competitor.
Some Googlers have claimed that if you received an "unnatural link" warning in WMT, it's manual. I'm not entirely convinced of this, but it's now harder than ever to differentiate between manual link-based penalties and Penguin algorithmic adjustment. That brings us to...
Refreshing Adjustments (Penalties)
Panda, Penguin, and a few other updates are a little different. We've seen instances where a user makes a big change (a complete redesign for Panda, or redirecting the entire site); the trend seems to be a brief recovery followed by a drop once the algorithm refreshes.
The obvious up-side here is that if you were going to recover from the penalty anyway, you may start to recover a bit sooner and don't have to wait for the next refresh. The downside is that it's a lot of work to do correctly, and it might be a very short-lived change.
--
Generally, I'd say it's best to clean up the site and keep going on the same domain. If you have a lot of bad links pointing to a specific page, you may want to 410 that page and start a new one, then mention this in your reconsideration request. Otherwise, it's the old process of removal (keeping notes) and using disavow if reconsideration and clean up prove insufficient.
-
The best thing would be to clean up the bad links, file a reconsideration request and then 301 the old domain to the new one...that is if you have some good links to the old domain. If you only have spammy links then starting afresh would probably be easier.
-
We were in a similar situation and opted not top take the chance. We started from scratch and did not 301. Better safe than sorry.
-
I have seen a certain case I analysed who did 301 redirects. They were fine but I am still skeptical doing such move.
Personally, to 301 redirect a penalised site to a new domain may mean acquiring the spammy links from the old domain. I will not recommend it. If you think the old domain is no longer worth reviving then simply start a new website. This is a matter of calculating your resource spend vs benefits.
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
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
301 Redirect from query string to new static page
If i want to create a redirect from a page where the slug ends like this "/?i=4839&mid=1000&id=41537" to a static, more SEO friendly slug like "/contact-us/", will a standard 301 redirect suffice? Thanks, Nails
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | matt.nails0 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
Reverting back to old domain name.
I've recently been asked by a client if I can foresee any issues with reverting back to their original domain name. With the original domain name they had a pretty decent DA for their sector which they have now lost. Although I do appreciate that over time this might come back, the CEO is very keen to switch back to the old domain. They do currently have 301 redirects from the old domain to the new and have implemented rel canonical. As yet they have not notified Google of the change of address using Webmaster Tools. Can anyone forsee any issues with returning back to the old domain name? They have only been using the new domain name for a couple of months which currently has a DA for 1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Macrofireball0 -
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
When should you redirect a domain completely?
We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
How long should a domain redirect take?
Hi, I know that this is a 'How long is a piece of string?' type question but at what point should the ranking value of site A pass over to site B following a domain 301 redirect? I have shifted a domain over to a new URL, same hosting server, same IP address. I haven't made any URL changes or any content changes other than to change the site logo to match the new domain name. Domain B is basically an exact clone of domain A. I have redirected Domain A to domain B using the following line at the top of the .htaccess file:- Redirect 301 / http://www.newdomain.com/ I have submitted a sitemap for the new domain via google webmaster tools. It looks like the original domain as been completely indexed by google following the redirect as all rankings have been dropped from the results and there are no results for a site:olddomain.com search. Surely the rankings should have switched over at this point? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1