301 domain to another: will destination domain get "sandboxed"?

both sites are very old and with tons of links...

[walkman]

I have a domain with plenty of links and I no longer use it. The site has been discontinued, the content has been removed, and all I have is a placeholder page. The site though, still gets 1000's of visits from the existing links.

If I 301 that domain to my other site, do you think the destination domain would be "sandboxed" /flagged by Google for getting too many links too fast? My other site appeals to most users, and while unrelated, I can get some money for it given the substantial number of visitors.

Has anyone tried this, and with what results?

[Quadrille]

How would it affect the visitors?

If they were expecting a Women's Shoe site, and you are sending them to an Igloo Architecture site, they may not be best pleased. Disappointed visitors, especially ones who land miles from where they thought they were going, are exactly the ones who send reports to Google ...

... And there have been whispers of Google 'turning off' ranking for sites that appear to change content ...

If it's in the interests of those who will be redirected, you'll have no problems.

[walkman]

as far as people being disappointed. I see you point, and I thought about it. But then, the site has been blank (no content) for close to a year, so people will be disappointed anyway. Of course, seeing a 404 on another domain might raise more eyebrows but I feel it's a waste to leave it like that. I did put a LOT of time to get those links to be honest.

>>> If it's in the interests of those who will be redirected, you'll have no problems.

One was a political /news blog-type site, and the other is related to shopping. Not exactly a perfect match ;), so if Google is strict in matching content with inbound links I am toast.

I am curious what would happen if a very popular blog with 15000 pages linked sitewide to mom-pop-business-site.com? Sandboxe, or do well-linked blogs contain special powers? Any thoughts?

Edit: I got an idea: How about I do a 301 to www.otherdomain.com/folder/ where I would say that www.populardomain.com has been closed. Of course, I would have links to my commercial pages there. No?

thanks again,

[Imaster]

... And there have been whispers of Google 'turning off' ranking for sites that appear to change content ...

I haven't been very active lately, so I don't know if this has been discussed before. Can you provide me with more information about this or could you point me to discussions about the same.

TIA

[walkman]

>> I haven't been very active lately, so I don't know if this has been discussed before. Can you provide me with more information about this or could you point me to discussions about the same.

Not true in my case. I tried on a domain and worked like magic: in 1996 I registered a domain, not a dictionary word--not in english anyway--and posted a few pages in 1997 on domain.com/something folder. The folder name and info had nothing to do with the domain, just back then, I didn't want to pay hosting for another domian so I used this as a catch all domain. It got popular with students and got plenty of one way links, including DMOZ, CNN, Yahoo etc.

In 2005, I added another folder with unrelated material, and it ranked very high as soon as Google got it.

[Quadrille]

>>And there have been whispers of Google 'turning off' ranking for sites that appear to change content ...

I haven't been very active lately, so I don't know if this has been discussed before. Can you provide me with more information about this or could you point me to discussions about the same.

I regret I can't - it came up in a couple of discussions in another place, 2-3 moths ago. I cannot recall the details, or be sure how reliable it sounded at the time - but if no-one else has heard about it, feel safe in dismissing it as one more Google Scare Story - and I will too!