Some Google Update (???) - All of My 301's Killed

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trustumar

14 years ago

Mine are still ranking. I redirected 2 penguin hit sites to two different authority sites just for experiment. Their ranking improved. These authority sites are not mine.

There may have been another Penguin refresh.

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Lares

14 years ago

Could be. 2 of my sites that were hit by penguin recovered some of inner pages in last 24 hours.

How do you guys use redirects? You use this code to redirect whole domain:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Or redirect page by page?

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Lares

Could be. 2 of my sites that were hit by penguin recovered some of inner pages in last 24 hours.

How do you guys use redirects? You use this code to redirect whole domain:

Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Or redirect page by page?

I've tried both - page by page and whole site -> new site. Google attributes the links to pages just fine in both cases.

Also, if you just copy the whole site over without any changes Google sees it as a redirect (even without a 301). This effect drops off over time.

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Lares 14 years ago

Well i am planning to create new site with new theme, new articles and then redirect old penalized domain to new one. Will see how this work.

But now i have 2nd thoughts
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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

A 301 is telling a bot (or server) that Page A is now Page B. Why wouldn't the problems from Page A move to Page B eventually?

Because 301's don't pass all link juice and there are other variables at play, such as the new domain name could contain different keywords (or no keywords at all) or have age (which can also be a factor), or existing links... Because of these reasons 301's worked quite fine on Penguinized sites up until now (at least here). A manual penalty would have been passed on to the new domain immediately. But not an algorithmic one.

Most other penalties pass through a 301 in a matter of days or a week at most. These ones were fine for over 2 months, ranking and making money.

There's also absolutely no way that 20+ Penguinized, 301'd then recovered for a few months sites all got destroyed on the same day. Can't be a coincidence.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

A 301 is telling a bot (or server) that Page A is now Page B. Why wouldn't the problems from Page A move to Page B eventually?

Yeah thats why I never jumped on that bandwagon.

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Because 301's don't pass all link juice

Passes most though and that essentially means the old sites link profile is inherited by the new. Penguin had several link data points it looked at so potentially if you got dinged for links you are potentially putting the red dot (sniper rifle reference) on the new domain

A manual penalty would have been passed on to the new domain immediately. But not an algorithmic one.

Depends. I think part of google's strategy is to keep everyone focused on one hand while doing something with the other like a magician does. There are hundreds of changes every year they don't announce and they probably only announce the ones they know they won't be able to hide because of an obvious shakeup. They want everyone to keep their eyes on the announced updates.

Maybe you got dinged by one of those hundreds of small unannounced changes. Not very hard change for the programmers to do. Seems so from what you have said.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Passes most though and that essentially means the old sites link profile is inherited by the new. Penguin had several link data points it looked at so potentially if you got dinged for links you are potentially putting the red dot (sniper rifle reference) on the new domain

Absolutely.

Depends. I think part of google's strategy is to keep everyone focused on one hand while doing something with the other like a magician does. There are hundreds of changes they don't announce and they probably only announce the ones they know they won't be able to hide because of an obvious shakeup.

Maybe you got dinged by one of those hundreds of small unannounced changes. Not very hard change for the programmers to do. Seems so from what you have said.

Yup. Like I said in the post above it looks like a tiny change which isn't going to be announced publicly. They didn't need to change much here really, just slightly adjust one of the many variables and boom - bad sites gone again.

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boxoun

14 years ago

Second thread about this issue. We are do for refresh. Keep us updated. No coincidence indeed.

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Bryan V

14 years ago

2 of my penguined 301s disappeared yesterday too.

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Perhaps an attic I shall seek.

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nik0

Banned 14 years ago

Interesting thanks for sharing.

Oh god I sound like some one liner

No seriously, we've done a few redirects and it only hold for like 2 weeks indeed but I know there were other ways of setting up the 301 that lasted longer. Guess Google took action against it. Even more reason to advice people to start over again. Often that is the easiest solution.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by nik0

Interesting thanks for sharing.

Oh god I sound like some one liner

No seriously, we've done a few redirects and it only hold for like 2 weeks indeed but I know there were other ways of setting up the 301 that lasted longer. Guess Google took action against it. Even more reason to advice people to start over again. Often that is the easiest solution.

Lulz. Yep, starting over seems to be the easiest option in most cases (except for already established brands and some other exceptions).

I'm ranking sites easier now than ever and I'll be back on page one in all of those niches I just lost in no time (well, 2-3 weeks). I had some hope that these 301's would stick long term, but oh well.

I now have over 20 confirmed cases of: penguin -> 301 -> killed yesterday. Strange that no one is talking about it. I guess not that many people actually tried to recover their sites this way (either gave up or started over).

I got to admit that my way of doing SEO has changed a lot over the last six months. Like almost too much, I feel a bit SEO-white-knightish inside.

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Mike Anthony

14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

L

I now have over 20 confirmed cases of: penguin -> 301 -> killed yesterday. Strange that no one is talking about it. I guess not that many people actually tried to recover their sites this way (either gave up or started over).

As you know 301s are used generally by companies changing names/domains or pages and from my experience researching domain names changes like this wouldn't affect white hat SEO as much.

First the links are less likely to be hit by penguin anyway and if you look through some high Pr faked (bad but widely used term since a lot of them are not faked just 301 redirected for other reasons) domains backlinks you will see that they don't just 301 redirect but they contact their link partners who voluntary (or for payment

) linked to them. Once they have all the link changed over they let the domain go its merry way and thts when you get all excited to find a PR 5+ to register or on auction at a cheap price and then find out it has no links.

Most Imers can't contact their link partners for a change because it would result in a removal and an IP block instead. lol

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prismkuet

14 years ago

All 301 gone! Google will make me a mad!

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Neville Pettersson

14 years ago

Ouch! I never did try the 301 route. Maybe would have been good to squeeze a few months out of my sites, but going by what has been said here didn't last.

mozcast.com did hit 81 degrees yesterday indicating strong serp movement. Does this also indicate that penguin is not a filter refresh after all? Maybe Mike was right after all?

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14 years ago

It's just interesting that it took so long for the penalties to be passed, must have been a small adjustment without any announcements.

Just wanted to make it clear that I do know that 301's pass penalties (mostly within a few days to a week). This wasn't the case with Penguin, because it's algorithmic and not technically a penalty (well, technically, lol). I just check how long the rankings stuck for: 2.5 months to 3 months on each of my sites. That's way past the usual "301 passing a penalty to the new domain" period.

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yukon

Banned 14 years ago

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect, why wouldn't any/all problems follow the redirected URL, the bad URL would be forever attached to the new URL, they are basically the same URL.

Why not dump both current URLs & paste the old content on a new clean page/URL, then build better links?

If you have any pages indexed on the site, the domain is ok.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Why not dump both current URLs & paste the old content on a new clean page/URL, then build better links?

If you have any pages indexed on the site, the domain is ok.

I've tried that very thing on a penalised site with no luck. The site still had Google traffic for non-penalised pages but a new URL and starting a penalised keyword/page again didn't work. I wasn't too scientific about it though.

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yukon

Banned 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

I've tried that very thing on a penalised site with no luck. The site still had Google traffic for non-penalised pages but a new URL and starting a penalised keyword/page again didn't work. I wasn't too scientific about it though.

Are you saying the old page content was flagged by Google, because that would be the only remnants of the old page/URL?

Having other pages on the same domain still indexed (and getting G traffic) proves the domain itself is still ok with Google. Why wouldn't a new page/URL/back-links work on the same domain?

I have a hard time believing Google is following old page content, when that content moves to a new page without a redirect.

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14 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Are you saying the old page content was flagged by Google, because that would be the only remnants of the old page/URL?

Having other pages on the same domain still indexed (and getting G traffic) proves the domain itself is still ok with Google. Why wouldn't a new page/URL/back-links work on the same domain?

I have a hard time believing Google is following old page content, when that content moves to a new page without a redirect.

Yukon, here's what I know:

Take your content and copy paste it on a different domain with identical URL structure. No redirect. Kill the old page/site. Google adds a redirect automatically. Literally seen this happen many times now - domains hosted on different IP's and all that. No redirect anywhere.

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yukon

Banned 14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Yukon, here's what I know:

Take your content and copy paste it on a different domain with identical URL structure. No redirect. Kill the old page/site. Google adds a redirect automatically. Literally seen this happen many times now - domains hosted on different IP's and all that. No redirect anywhere.

Are you high? Maybe I'm high?

No way will Google do a redirect from one domain to the other with no 301/302 on either domain, not going to happen.

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Mantasmo 14 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Are you high? Maybe I'm high?

No way will Google do a redirect from one domain to the other with no 301/302 on either domain, not going to happen.

Yea that's what I thought when it happened.

I'll try to replicate it with one of my sites. If it happens again I'll send you a PM with both URL's, lol. Give me a few days.

Even infolddomain.com would show newdomain.com.
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14 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Are you saying the old page content was flagged by Google, because that would be the only remnants of the old page/URL?

Having other pages on the same domain still indexed (and getting G traffic) proves the domain itself is still ok with Google. Why wouldn't a new page/URL/back-links work on the same domain?

I have a hard time believing Google is following old page content, when that content moves to a new page without a redirect.

No, I never said that.

Keywords (abused anchor text) however...Maybe.

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14 years ago

Yea I'm in the process of moving these sites to new domains right now. The content is being modified slightly, I'm also changing up title tags and stuff like that.

It's not a big deal for me as I own all of the good links to these sites (and the 5k+ spam links to each domain don't really matter any more), so I'm just going to modify all of the high PR links and be back on page one in a couple weeks or so (this time using only "clean" backlinks).

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dp40oz

14 years ago

Doesn't necessarily need to be a major algo change. Ive had this sort of thing happen with multiple 301's in the past. May just be a data refresh or something. 301ing out of a penalty is like chasing your tail. When I used to do it it reminded me of playing the old Mario Bros' games. When you'd jump on a floating thing in the air and you had like 2 seconds to jump off to another one before it fell. Thats basically about how solid 301ing out of penalties is. It rarely works long term unless it was a content penalty and you 301 to higher quality content. It'll work for a bit and then your choice is to either keep doing it endlessly or just call it a day on the link juice.

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nik0

Banned 14 years ago

Lol are you kidding me, that can't be possible (theoretically) lol

Btw I just read a story in the newspaper that Google is really generous to their employees, I almost start to love them

For example kids of employees get like $1k/month, till their 19th, and when an employee dies then the ones who are left get 50% of the salary still paid for 10 years. WOW, respect!

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legoog8

14 years ago

my websites did that it jumped 1k down then 1.4k up in a few days but now it stronger

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14 years ago

Can anyone think of a reason why info

lddomain.com would return newdomain.com with no redirects in place?

I'm serious.

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14 years ago

It was previously redirected to that domain and the new details haven't been cached yet.

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Mantasmo 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

It was previously redirected to that domain and the new details haven't been cached yet.

Nope, no previous redirects.
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14 years ago

OK so a small batch (5 sites) of tester EMD's got killed tonight. It's great actually, because I've been getting better at setting up tester sites (variables are a lot better isolated), so it's easier to see what's going on. I may post some stats up later on, haven't done a proper analysis yet. It's not going to be anything special really, just some extra info for those interested.

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Rndmals 14 years ago

Originally Posted by bnetwork

OK so a small batch (5 sites) of tester EMD's got killed tonight.

Is it related to the '301' issue as well or is it a separate thing entirely?
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- Mantasmo 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Rndmals
  
  Is it related to the '301' issue as well or is it a separate thing entirely?
  
  Separate thing. Only had about 200 backlinks to each micro site, that's the strangest thing.
  
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  Mantasmo 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by bnetwork
  
  Separate thing. Only had about 200 backlinks to each micro site, that's the strangest thing.
  
  All micro sites bounced back to previous positions. Weird. Anyways, nothing to see here.
  
  301's still dead. Moved everything already, swapped out all links - let's wait for things to start ranking on fresh domains with strong backlinks.
  
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14 years ago

Place the domain in Opensiteexplorer and see if it picks up the redirect. I highly doubt that Google as redirecting the query based on assumption. The only time what you're describing happens (previously) is when a previous redirect existed and the new content hasn't fully cached yet. The info: is one of the last ones to come through from my experience.

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