How to Let Google Know I am a new Site Owner and to Remove or De-value all backlinks?
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I am looking to buy a new domain for a brand.
Problem is the domain has was registered in 1996 and has around 6k backlinks (according to ahrefs) that I need removed as the old content will have no relevance to my new site.
Should I just disavow all of them? Is there anything "special" I can do to let Google know that it will be new site owner/content and to remove/discount the current links?
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A three letter, brandable EMD-- Sounds like the kind of thing someone would want to keep and use or sell for a bunch of money. But then when you add the "6K junk links" it sound like the kind of thing someone would just want to sell and hope to get a bunch of money. Playing games with the registrar isn't going to help help you in the matter. Did you try offering them half price? It still may not be worth it.
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Hey Thanks for the responses.
The site in question does not have any manual penalty. It just has a bunch of junk links that I need to get rid of before I start building an authority site.
I would like to avoid using this domain name but it is a 3 letter EMD thats brandable.
What if I transferred the domain to a new owner that does not have the whois blocked? Thereby maybe letting google know that there is a new owner. Anyone have experience with this?
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I think that it is imposible to know every back link you have to disavow. I had a site that i tried to disavow everything and always keep appearing new links that i did not found.
although if the domain have a manual action, and you want to focus on other words, maybe it won't heart you.
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Do you know if there is a manual action against the site? If so, in some cases, you can show Google evidence that you are the new owner and they will lift the action. If they don't lift the action then you have to go through the full process of cleaning up the backlink profile (trying to remove as many bad links as possible and then disavowing the remaining unnatural links) and then filing for reconsideration. This is usually what happens.
If there is no manual action on the site then disavowing the bad links will probably do the trick. The problem is that there are so many unknowns surrounding the disavow tool.
If this is a site that is going to be important to you, and if the domain currently has an unnatural links problem then I wouldn't risk trying to clean it up. I'd probably buy a different domain name.
With all of that being said, are the links to the site actually bad ones? If they are primarily self made, low quality links then everything I said above still applies. If it's just that the links are not relevant to your content then I wouldn't worry about that and I'd just go ahead and create my new site.
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You have to watch out for that, Richard. Here is video from Matt Cutts on the issue. Basically, you're putting yourself in deep water by purchasing such a domain. As Matt says, it can be "a little bit difficult" (that's Matt-speak for "next to impossible") to pull the domain out of a penalty because of it's back links. There is often good reason to pass on buying such a domain and you really need to do your homework before you make the decision to buy.
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