Avoiding the sandbox with a 301... is it possible?

[superclown2]

I'm launching a new site on a new domain name and I don't want it to spend six months in sandbox purgatory if it attracts some early links so I'm thinking of pointing an existing site (an old one that I've never really developed) at it using a 301 permanent redirect. My reasoning is: the new site will hopefully be viewed by Google as an old one and so will be able to attract incoming links without triggering the 'new site penalty'. Can anyone see a flaw in this idea? I'm only interested in Google's reaction since here in the UK they have over 90% of the search market.

[aristotle]

My reasoning is: the new site will hopefully be viewed by Google as an old one

Since it actually will be a new site, I don't think it's a cinch that Google will view it as an old one.

[superclown2]

Does anyone have any experience of this?

[Robert Charlton]

Your question isn't clear to me. What's the status of the old site? Is there content on it and does it have inbound links that are worth preserving?

Are the topic areas of the old site and the new domain related? Are you thinking of this as a way to establish a new long term business, or as a way of getting a short term bump in rankings before the setup crashes.

The value of the old site in this maneuver is likely to be the age and quality of the inbound links it already has... not merely the fact that it is old... and how relevant those inbounds are to the content you're planning to promote on the new domain.

Regarding the age of backlinks and their value, this discussion might provide some food for thought....

Does Google "Age" Your Backlinks?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4176006.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[ascensions]

I know it works with internal links, as I have done it. For example, moving a topic to a new domain and 301ing it. I can't say how much "punch" it loses in the process, but it's better than nothing. As far as domain forwarding, such as that we're talking about the default/index page? I have no clue!

[superclown2]

Your question isn't clear to me. What's the status of the old site? Is there content on it and does it have inbound links that are worth preserving?

The purpose of the exercise is just to get a new site, on a new domain name, launched without inbound links knocking it into the sandbox. A hypothesis I have is that if I 301 an existing, old site to it the new site might be viewed as an old, rather than a new one. I'm not really bothered about preserving inbound links from the donor site.

As we have seen, a new website is prone to getting a penalty if more than just a handful of inbound links appear during it's early life. This is the situation I want to avoid. I don't have a specific site in mind as the donor, but I have plenty to go at.

What I forsee is: setting up the new site on the donor domain. Leave it until Google has crawled it a few times; 301 to the new domain name. Work can then start on attracting backlinks.

[Robert Charlton]

OK, now I'm following your syntax....

A hypothesis I have is that if I 301 an existing, old site to it the new site might be viewed as an old, rather than a new one.

It might be more helpful to think of this as re-branding an old site, where you 301 redirect the old domain to a new one. Generally, when you rebrand an old site, you lose traffic for a while as Google sorts out the trust and relevancy issues. Among other things, I assume that Google makes judgments in this interval about whether the inbound links to the old domain are relevant to the new one, and about whether anything sneaky might be going on (as in what you're trying to do).

You don't avoid the issue of establishing trust for the new domain. FYI, this transition period, from old domain to new one, is what was originally called the "sandbox".

The exercise might work if you first simply changed domain names, keeping the same content... then got some backlinks to change to the new domain, and then gradually changed to new content. Depending on how related your inbound links are to the ultimate new content, that might work.

If too many inbound links too fast is going to raise a spam flag at Google, though, why should Google not be careful about a whole collection of inbounds, via a single redirect? And if you pour a whole bunch of inbounds into a domain, whether it's an old one or a new one doesn't make much difference. If you get more backlinks than actual traffic suggests you should be getting, you're most likely going to have problems.

I'm not really bothered about preserving inbound links from the donor site.

The links, IMO, are all you are in fact preserving. It's not the age of the domain.... it's the age of the backlinks, and about a whole set of signals during a transition that indicate to Google that this is one continuous business or entity legitimately evolving into another one, one which deserves the backlink credits.

This recent discussion, btw (whatever the reason for the display of redirected domains in the serps), clearly indicates that Google has the old domains indexed and is following them in some way....

Domain name replaced in SERPS with alias domain name
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4327200.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[superclown2]

Domain name replaced in SERPS with alias domain name
[webmasterworld.com...] [webmasterworld.com]

Wow. Frightening. I think that this is one idea I'll leave on the back burner. Thanks!