Google Penalty Through 301 Redirect - Another Myth?

8 replies
Common belief is that if your site is penalized, and you decide to get a new domain and simply make a redirect to it, penalty will transfer as well. But, what if competitor does this to you? Cause if it is not possible, than you indeed can get rid of a penalty, as long as you rewrite the content I presume. Anybody has experience in this? Also, are there any tools to check if site receives 301 redirects from other pages?
#301 #google #myth #penalty #redirect
  • Profile picture of the author Brendan Mace
    Is this a myth??? I've never heard anyone say that 301 redirects transfer all existing google penalties. As far as I know.... they do not.
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    According to that Matt guy, the 301 redirect passes all value -- good or bad -- to the new url.
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  • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
    A competitor can never ever cause your site to be penalised. You are completely safe from that. If that was the case it would be dead easy for an competitor to link in an undesirable way to affect your site. They can't.

    The penalty remains with the original site. Penalties are normally "domain based".

    Remember that if your domain is penalized google actually remove any benefit that domain had - e.g. page rank, authority, etc (depending on the type of penalty) so a 301 redirect would be useless because there is nothing to transfer as it has already been removed.

    Make sense?

    cheers


    Tim
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    • Profile picture of the author James Alexander
      Originally Posted by tim_buchalka View Post

      A competitor can never ever cause your site to be penalised. You are completely safe from that. If that was the case it would be dead easy for an competitor to link in an undesirable way to affect your site. They can't.

      The penalty remains with the original site. Penalties are normally "domain based".

      Remember that if your domain is penalized google actually remove any benefit that domain had - e.g. page rank, authority, etc (depending on the type of penalty) so a 301 redirect would be useless because there is nothing to transfer as it has already been removed.

      Make sense?

      cheers


      Tim
      Penalty doesn't always mean loss of PageRank, many penalties are triggered by filters (like excessive links, linking to bad site, etc) and pages simply no longer rank for keywords - happened to my site.

      Originally Posted by tpw View Post

      According to that Matt guy, the 301 redirect passes all value -- good or bad -- to the new url.
      It makes sense if url is new, penalty will be transferred. I came to conclusion, that when excessive back-linking is applied to a new site, it is unlikely to be done by competitors, as site is not a threat yet. So Google can pretty safely assume that such site is breaking guidelines. But, if site is well established, it should be fine and any bad redirects or backlinks are simply discounted by Google.
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      • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
        Originally Posted by James Alexander View Post

        Penalty doesn't always means loss of PageRank, many penalties are triggered by filter (like excessive links, linking to bad site, etc) and simply no longer rank for keywords - happened to my site.
        I came to conclusion, that when excessive back-linking is applied to a new site, it is unlikely to be done by competitors, as site is not a threat yet. So Google can pretty safely assume that such site is breaking rules. But, if site is well established, it should be fine and any bad redirects or backlinks are simply discounted by Google.
        Hi James,

        That is not a penalty as such, that is just a sign your site has no authority as it's new. There is really no such thing as "excessive back-linking" either for that matter.

        The reality is all websites have a certain measure of trust and they gain more over time by the content they add and the links from authority sites that they receive.

        Having or not having authority and penalties being applied to a site for doing something "wrong" are two completely different things.

        I agree that its most likely possible to get a penalty to your website if YOU link to a "bad" site. What is not possible is for your side to be penalised because a bad site links TO your site. That said I have never been penalised by linking to any other site and I have tested this.. Extensively.
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        • Profile picture of the author James Alexander
          Originally Posted by tim_buchalka View Post

          Hi James,

          That is not a penalty as such, that is just a sign your site has no authority as it's new. There is really no such thing as "excessive back-linking" either for that matter.

          The reality is all websites have a certain measure of trust and they gain more over time by the content they add and the links from authority sites that they receive.

          Having or not having authority and penalties being applied to a site for doing something "wrong" are two completely different things.

          I agree that its most likely possible to get a penalty to your website if YOU link to a "bad" site. What is not possible is for your side to be penalised because a bad site links TO your site. That said I have never been penalised by linking to any other site and I have tested this.. Extensively.
          I have to disagree, there are filters in Google that catch suspicious linkbuilding. However, I agree that the more authority and trust site has, the less likely it will be affected. But, if I've learned one thinng in SEO, that is that people are allowed to have different opinions, and amusingly both can be right at the same time. In one of the Terry Kyle's videos, he suggests that Google might be tweaking algorithm back and forth, so that we wouldn't be able to track it with experimenting.

          Regarding my site, I don't think it's an authority issue and probably not a backlinking issue. I guess I will never find out. I will just wait for a month or so and then submit a reconsideration request.
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  • Profile picture of the author Green Diamond
    I experienced this before but the site I was transferring the traffic to was not penalized. It may cause because of something else, such as the website you transfer the traffic is very new.

    Than yes , Google will find you this way...
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  • Profile picture of the author PrudentPanda
    Yes it will, penalty will transfer. Just did it on a fairly new SEOed site. About 80 visitors daily organic, and 301 a penalized domain (It is a PR 4, with no traffic) to that new site. Blam! instant penalty, went down to 48, and now 4 daily visitors on second day.
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