Site Banned - New Domain ?

[peacock]

One of my sites got banned by Google... Hard to tell but it looks like, because it was ranking nicely for a very £££ term some rival company put some horrible links (Chinese, Polish, viagra type stuff) into it. If that is what happened, then it's a shame tactics like that can work.

If I stick the same site on another domain does that help anything or is it just as bad --- either looks like a copy / duplicate content or if I do it the "proper" way with a redirect and URL move at GWT is that just going to pass the "bad-reputation" to the new domain and give it the same status ?

 

[retired_member13]

When you say banned do you mean deindexed or penalised?

Eg does site:domainname.co.uk return any results?

Also, do you know exactly why it happened? Was it purely the links?

 

[boxfish]

I think that tactic only works on new sites without any kind of link profile. If you keep building quality links then the domain should recover and also be protected against future attacks.

Not sure what happens when you transfer content. I would think it would be ok if it got deindexed first. If you did want to go down that route then I would think about getting it rewritten to be on the safe side.

 

[peacock]

When you say banned do you mean deindexed or penalised?

Eg does site:domainname.co.uk return any results?

Also, do you know exactly why it happened? Was it purely the links?

Thanks for the reply.


Sorry, I mean penalised.

site:domainname.co.uk does return the whole site - all the pages are in the index, it's just the rankings have been wiped out.

Site has a couple of years history and was always doing OK, then it did better for a while but since the crap links it disappeared -- so that's just an assumption.... One funny thing is that is still gets Google images hits.

I have an action plan to improve the content, get some social media attention over the next couple of months but am not sure if I should actually submit a reconsideration request or hope that it comes back after 90 days or whatever.

 

[retired_member13]

Link penalties aren't usually permanent.

IMO you can either:

Keep updating the site and link building and wait for it to recover.

or

Submit a reconsideration request detailing what you think has happened.

If you 301 the site somewhere else the links and the penalty will still hold (ie if the links are the reason then the penalty will pass through). If you dupe the site onto another URL without a 301 it'll likely get penalised (at least in the short term) for that anyway.

 

[peacock]

Thanks for both replies / advice.

That's what I will do then, if I don't see an improvement after a few months of improving and adding new content etc I will try the reconsideration route.

Quite interesting... I'm glad I have so many sites that I can treat events like this as an experiment

 

[theonemanyuri]

How longs it been gone for?

I've got 1 or 2 sites that have been on page 1 for terms, then completely dropped out of G then come back again after a month. I shouldn't worry too much if it's part of a larger portfolio, like the other guys have said just keep getting decent links and it should return

 

[vizzo]

When did this happen? was it around the time of the Google "Panda" update (around mid April for UK sites)?

 

[arv]

I have had the exact issue with one of my sites, but it regained its ranking in a month. Mine was due to server migration for which I had 5 hrs downtime. I think you must give G some time before requesting reconsideration.

 

[boxfish]

Hey Peacock, just found this, may be worth a watch http://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday

 

[Frog]

If you 301 the site somewhere else the links and the penalty will still hold (ie if the links are the reason then the penalty will pass through). If you dupe the site onto another URL without a 301 it'll likely get penalised (at least in the short term) for that anyway.

It might not hold... it wouldn't be fair to post the url publicly but I watched a competitor in one really competitive niche 301 his way out of a link filter/penalty. His site was gone altogether, 301'd it to a new domain and he was straight back in the game, in his exact old position. All of the old dodgy links still passing through the redirect with seemingly no problem. This was maybe a year ago, and he still ranks right now.

 

[wb]

All of the old dodgy links still passing through the redirect with seemingly no problem.

Thinking about it, I guess that makes sense. Unless done manually, surely it wouldn't be possible for search engines to pass a penalty over to another domain? Otherwise I guess people could just go around getting new domains penalised then 301'ing them over to competitors with the aim of penalising them.

It's getting late though, so I may have missed some obvious logic in that.

 

[Frog]

It would be really easy to detect attempts to burn someone elses site like that though. Its extremely easy to get a brand new domain filtered, but there is no realistic chance you can flow that penalty to someone elses real site.

You could create a near unlimited number of filtered/penalised junk sites for $50 a go... it would be mayhem if you could use these to flatten competitors sites.