Old site index issues

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Old site index issues

newbamboo

8:41 am on Dec 30, 2014 (gmt 0)

We were hit by Penguin 3.0 in October for our .co.uk site.

The issue was legacy links - should have disavowed more. Usual story.

We 302'd away from the .co.uk to the .com domain. With a comprehensive disavow added to both .co.uk and .com in WMT.

Anyway rankings came back to a similar level, however around the 19th Dec we saw a drop on the .com. Not as bad as before, but considerable - around half of terms dropped.

Since then for the main term the .co.uk ranks 3rd for a localised version of the main keyword rather than the .com.

Any thoughts on the issue here or something that I may have missed?

goodroi

12:38 pm on Dec 30, 2014 (gmt 0)

I am a little confused. What do you mean when you say you "302'd away from the .co.uk to the .com domain"? What specifically are you redirecting and why not use a 301? Are you intentionally trying to keep the co.uk and .com both listed in the serps?

newbamboo

8:37 pm on Jan 4, 2015 (gmt 0)

We had 302'd in order to not pass on the Penguin penalty.

Would you say we would be better just setting up a 301 from the old site to new? Even with the prospect of passing on the penalty.

FranticFish

8:08 am on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

302 has historically been the 'hijack' redirect, in that if you implemented one on site A and pointed it to site B then site B's content would be indexed and attributed to site A in Google's index. That said, I've not read about that being a problem for quite some time.

Also, that doesn't seem to have happened to you as you got your .com indexed.

The official spec for 302 is 'moved temporarily', but Google has form for not strictly honouring redirects according to spec, no doubt because they have been mightily misused and abused.

This is all supposition, but perhaps the 302 granted you a temporary reprieve, and eventually the 302 was honoured as a 301 and your problems followed you to the new domain?

If I wanted to move traffic from a penalised domain to a new non-penalised domain I would do so in a way that ONLY humans could follow. As Googlebot follows HTTP redirects and also meta-refresh redirects and even some Javascript redirects, neither a 302 or 301 would be my choice.

newbamboo

9:12 am on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the response FranticFish.

I agree it could be that there was a temporary reprieve, however the terms haven't dropped anywhere near as much as they did previously.

Moving forward would you suggest I just 301 redirect the domain and notify Google of the change in WMT?

Or is there are alternative clean redirect method.

Having both sites indexed is far from ideal.

Both sites have comprehensive disavows uploaded.

FranticFish

9:42 am on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

I think that, as your actions have already demonstrated that you are the owner of both domains, you're effectively committed to finish what you've started.

So I personally would make the redirect permanent (301) from .co.uk to .com (and check that all pages currently indexed for the .co.uk redirect to their equivalent on the .com in one 'hop' to clear out .co.uk from the index), then work hard on establishing trust for the .com with new content and outreach to get quality links and mentions.

Robert Charlton

9:52 am on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

I remember that if Google dislikes a site enough, they've stated that the penalty might follow you even if you change domains and don't redirect. Maybe to the ends of the Earth. ;)

Barry Schwartz on John Mueller comments here...

Google Penalties Might Follow You To A New Domain Name
Feb 25, 2014 - by Barry Schwartz
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalty-site-move-18163.html [seroundtable.com]

So we know that if you have a penalty on your site and you move your site to a new domain and redirect the URLs to that new domain, the penalty will flow because of the redirects. That is known.

What I did not know is that if you took your site and moved it to a new domain but did not redirect the old domain to the new, that Google may also pass along the penalty without redirecting the URLs.

If the site is basically a copy of the site and all you are doing is moving it to a new domain in order to leave your link or other Google penalty behind, it might back fire on you.

WebmasterWorld discussion on the topic, with a fairly comprehensive presentation of approaches, here...

Moving domain, diverting traffic without letting Google know about it
Jan 26, 2014
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4640390.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Planet13

3:19 pm on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

@ newbamboo:

I hope you could respond to goodroi's question above, namely:

Are you intentionally trying to keep the co.uk and .com both listed in the serps?

Thanks in advance.

newbamboo

4:04 pm on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

Thanks @FranticFish.

@Robert Charlton - I'm assuming from FF's comments (and hoping) that it is an indexation issue from using a 302

Hi @Planet13 we only want the .com indexed now.

Planet13

5:34 pm on Jan 5, 2015 (gmt 0)

we only want the .com indexed now.

Since then for the main term the .co.uk ranks 3rd for a localised version of the main keyword rather than the .com.

I don't understand.

If you want ONLY the .com version of the site to rank, why is the .co.uk site still online? It sounds like you are allowing google to index BOTH the .com and the .co.uk versions of the site.

Sorry if I am mistaken.