Pure Manual Spam v/s New website

[bondhoward]

My website nowwhatstudio.com hit by google pure spam and google applied manual spam action to the website.

1. Why google applied manual spam action to my website? How Can I recover my website.

2. I create new website (nowwhatmoments.com) with the same content from the old spam action website (nowwhatstudio.com). As google removed my old website content from search indexed. Can I use the same content for a new website? I already spend allot of money on content.

If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website?

Or Can make edits the old website content and make it 80% original for a new website?

3. I can use my old website (nowwhatstudio) email id and social accounts for a new website?

[gfiorelli1]

Good answer Ryan.

Moreover, Howard, remember that Google - via John Mueller - advised that if site A is penalized, simply deleting it and cloning in a new domain B but not having solved the issues that cause site A being penalized, that won't "save" domain B from being penalized too after short time.

[EricaMcGillivray]

Moderator note: this question was also asked here.

[RyanPurkey]

Just from glancing at your site, the displayed content doesn't seem to be the source of the spam.  If I were you though I'd hire a trusted professional to help you purge bad links, hacker access, and rigorously check to make sure your site is clean before attempting to fix it by transferring to a new domain.  You want to make certain that the new site isn't carrying any of the old baggage from the one that got in trouble and typically you can get the old one fixed in about the same time if you're disciplined about it.

[bondhoward]

My main concern is, If I delete my old website from the server, after that Can I use the old website content for a new website?

[RyanPurkey]

I see. If you had a site that was hacked and were unable to get rid of the hacker inserted content then Google would see that content as pure spam.  Please do read through the Google guidelines as they're pretty clear on what they want.  Cheers!

[bondhoward]

Old site has many links from footer like website design and development. and some of the websites get hacked. May be this is the reason for manual penalty.

[RyanPurkey]

If the content from your old site is part of the problem, then you shouldn't use it.  There's a nice post on how rigorous Google is trying to become when presenting sites here: http://moz.com/blog/panda-pummels-press-release-websites-the-road-to-recovery. It's long, but gives you several insights into what Google is considering when looking for quality content.

For your site individually, what was the level of engagement? Were people spending a lot of time on site? Good conversations if you had a comment section? Lots of pages viewed per session? Several naturally received links form people sharing your content?  Referrals from email because people had emailed each other links to your site?

There are no tricks. A site people love can do a lot of technical things wrong and still do very well in Google.

[bondhoward]

Hi Ryan,

Can I use the old website content to the new website.? And will not repeat the mistake of old websites?

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Howard. Manual actions are typically applied due to the following: automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or other repeated or egregious violations of Google’s quality guidelines.  See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604777.  If that's the case with your site, and you keep using the same tactics as you've used in the past, none of the solutions above will provide a long term fix. For more on Manual Actions, see: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604824.